My employer The Sacramento Bee graciously allowed me to write about my experience pitching "Pink" at American Film Market in November. So far the feedback has been outstanding. It's a great boost to the effort. Now I need to capitalize in this good press and keep pressing. Here is the top of the story and a link to the full story which I would really encourage you to enjoy.
The film-pitch session – the one in which I’m one of 10 pre-selected participants – has began and I’m not there.
I’m in the bathroom frantically trying to free my new pink tie from the coffee stain it just acquired. I consider taking it off, but that would ruin my plan to brand myself as the guy pitching “Pink” by wearing a pink tie each of my four days at the American Film Market. “Pink” is a dramatic comedy based on Sacramento’s 1969 “bottomless” stripper trial, which made national news when Judge Earl Warren Jr. temporarily moved proceedings to a strip club so jurors could fairly determine whether the nude dancing violated community standards.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article8218959.html#storylink=cpy
Ed Fletcher with a look-a-like The Dude at the Jeff Bridges concert.
It’s the morning after but I still buzzing from my clandestine operation to get Jeff Bridges a copy of script “Pink.”
Bridges, who despite many great roles will always remembered as “The Dude” from the Big Lebowski, has been on my short list to play Sheriff Misterly from the beginning. When I saw he was coming to Sacramento to play music with his band I took it as a sign. After a fair amount of waffling, there I was watching the show strategizing how I’m going to get backstage.
When the show ended I caught a moment when one of guys guarding the door to backstage left his post and walked right back. The second wave of security wasn’t interested in doing his job so I walked past him.
When bridges who played a great set and a four song encore with his bandmates finished posing for a picture with some legitimate VIPs, I went in. I told him he seemed like a guy who believes in signs and that I took it as a sign that he was here to play and told him I wanted to give him my script.
By that point security was on to me, but Bridges said I was “Ok” and let me pitch him the movie as he walked to his dressing room. I gave a copy of the script to his guy and was on my way.
It was a beautiful end to a good week for Pink, my feature script about Sacramento’s 1969 “bottomless” stripper trial.
I was extremely happy with the turnout and energy of the Jan. 14 screening of my short film Goldie and others I hosted. It was good experience for myself as a film producer, good for the local film community and good for a local business.
With that behind me I decided it was time to refocus and prioritize my energy. I found that I’d been spending far too much time doing social media and not enough time doing. While there is a real potential upside of a large social media following, at times it feels a lot like a never ending online game. Social media is important but action is more important.
On the action front in recent days, I had my first meeting with an investment club, reached out to a new Hollywood friend and finally move my office out of my bedroom and into my spareroom.
The investment club isn’t ready to move yet and the overture has yet to bear fruit.
Each of those actions seemed at one point worthy of a blog post, but now seem overshadowed by “The Dude.”
I have no idea what will become of my move to get Bridges, but I’m happy fear didn’t prevent me from taking an affirmative step in response to the universe bringing Bridges to my town at the exact time my script was ready for him.
Go team Pink.
It's with great humility that earlier this week I launched a crowdfunding campaign to support marketing and distribution of my LGBT-friendly short film Goldie 48 hour film. The short was shot and edited for the Sacramento International Film Festival48-hour competition where it won "audience choice." Director Matthew Gilliamlovingly reedited it, then Brandon Oreno scored it and now we want your help submitting it to film festivals and marketing it's digital release.
I'll be honest, I agonized over whether the campaign would flop. We're wired to be afraid to ask for money, but rather than being governed by fear I choose to trust in the law of abundance. As author Keith Ferrazzisuggests in his book "Never Eat Alone", rather than thinking of support as something one uses up, think of it as something that grows as you earn it by doing good work and supporting others.
My primary goal remains moving my feature length script Pink forward, but I think supporting, marketing and attending festivals in support of Pink will set me on the path. Pink is based on Sacramento 1969 "bottomless" stripper trial.
I'm a guest on Johnny Flores' Sacramento-based Serious Talk. Seriously. podcast about people doing things. We talk about everything from growing up in Orangevale, to life in the South, to Access Sacramento and comedy. Of course we also talk about my film projects.
I'm all about supporting the Sacramento film community so I was happy to offer a guest blog post to our friends at California Film Foundation. I'm also an active member of the Capitol Film Arts Alliance. Here a preview of the CFF post:
There was a time in the not too distant past where I would have been happy to sell my screenplay “Pink” for a reasonable price and crossed my fingers in hopes the studio would actually make the movie.Those days are now gone. After attending American Film Market in Santa Monica this November, I’m convinced that I want to be part of the critical decision making process that takes the script and transforms it into living breathing art. Who directs, who stars and the budget are just a handful of the decisions that can turn a good script into a shitty movie or turn a great script into a timeless work of art. Read the full post.
Kevin Jonas (right) talks twitter with Ian Ziering and Johnny Damon on NBC's Celerity Apprentice
I’m not ready to check myself into a facility quite yet, but I’m showing early signs of social media addiction.
Checking my facebook and twitter are the first and last things I do with my day. Seeing new “likes” to my facebook movie page brings me more joy than reasonable. I have five twitter accounts.
I may be lapsing towards the excess, but its not like playing “Angry Birds” or “Candy Crush” there is an end game in play, even if there is no end to the social media game.
In this age, a large social media following is power. That power was a major subject line of the first episode of Celebrity Apprentice. While both project managers pushed their team to take full advantage of social media to drive attendance to their charity pie sale, the other celebrities rightly feared that even their combined energies were no match for Kevin Jonas’ 4.7 million twitter followers.
I’m a long long way from 4.7 million, but I play to employ social media to organically grow a following for my film “Pink.” Most cited example of a twitter feed being harnessed successfully launch a movie was the 2014 “Dear White People.”
Each new follow puts me one step closer.
With that in mindset, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not let to consume too much of my creative energy.
In the near future, I hope and expect “Team Pink” to grow and much of the social media heavy lifting will fall to others but in the mean time it's important to for me as the screenwriter/creative lead to keep my focus on the big picture and creating content worthy of attention.
Its all well and good to ask people to follow you, but if you don’t know where you’re leading them, we’re all lost.
Some people are content to watch bad things happen in their neighborhood. Not these guys. Armed with good intentions, they spend after work hours fighting crime, corruption and suffering. But this investigation my turn out be more than they bargained for. They'll need some fancy footwork to survive.
"Dance Step of Death" premiered at the Sacramento Film and Music Festival in 2012. After a good run on the Amazon Marketplace, if was launched for free on Vimeo Jan. 1, 2015.
In conjunction with the New Year's Day launch "Dance Step of Death" on the free video platform Viemo, I'm reposting an August 2012 piece I wrote for The Sacramento Bee reflecting on producing my first short film. Producing a film is a magical headache. I learned a great deal from doing this zombie comedy and much more since.
The first tangible step toward my comedic short film, "Dance Step of Death," took place in February over pizza at east Sacramento's One Speed, but the idea of producing my own film was hatched a year earlier.
I'd had adolescent film stirrings, first with my dad's old 8 mm camera and later with Super 8, but I packed away those ideas in favor of more practical pursuits.
In 2011, that itch came back.
After taking a screenwriting class at Access Sacramento, I sheepishly submitted my first short script for consideration in the A Place Called Sacramento Film Festival. The festival – in which they escort selected scripts through the production process – can be a godsend for first-time producers.
In hindsight, I'm glad my short was rejected.
A year later, I was again spending Saturday mornings in the uncomfortable classroom chairs at Access Sacramento, this time enrolled in a film production class. This time, I felt was ready for Access Sacramento's A Place Called Sacramento Film Festival.
Again I was rejected by the submission jury (something about too many zombie entries).
But a funny thing happened on the way to rejection. I had already met AK Long, who enthusiastically agreed to direct the film. We'd started to craft a funding plan, and he'd started the storyboards.
So on the fateful day of rejection, we decided to press on and enter the movie elsewhere. Within a day, I had a tentative agreement with Nathan Schemel, executive director of the Sacramento Film and Music Festival, to show "Dance Step of Death" at the festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday.
The only problem: We only had 11 weeks.
Producing a film is a little like putting together a football team for one game. Thankfully, Long, a recent UC Davis graduate, brought his own connections and a team of people who were involved in his earlier projects. In the subsequent weeks, people from his network and mine joined as others dropped out.
The job of the producer is largely to rent the kitchen, buy the ingredients, then get out of the director's way until it's time to sell the soup.
In film terms, that means finding a script (easy enough – I wrote it), finding the locations, securing the talent, finding a way to pay for everything and distributing the film.
A co-worker at The Bee asked me how I found the time. I reminded him that I don't have kids. I woke up most mornings between 6 and 7 a.m. and worked for three hours or so, firing off emails and making plans. I'd meet with Long once or twice a week after work and I followed the schedule.
Producing a movie tests your networks. My network rose to the challenge. You never know what people will say "yes" to until you ask.
The process was not without stumbles, stressful evenings and the generalized anxiety that comes with having to trust that all the various team members you've assembled will perform the job they've agreed to do – for free.
Stressful, yes, but the process was magical.
It's one thing to write about three wannabe superheroes and their efforts to look into a police coverup, and quite another to see the characters take shape first in drawings, then in real costumes and finally as local actors performing the words you put to page.
Now, I'm ready for one more magical moment: seeing it on the big screen.
As a general rule the press is willing to use stolen documents if the news value of the story warrants it. In many instances, I’m not sure the value of the story, say one reveling Sony execs think Adam Sandler is an a-hole, meets any reasonable standard.
But at the same time, as someone interesting in film, the leaks provide candor seldom shared with the outside world. Largely in the name of protecting the commercial interest in the movie, Hollywood types rarely air their grievances publicly. So in effect we never see how the soup gets made or that the chief was replaced mid-meal.
Yesterday’s Gawker post about a reply-all chain argument about the Gaza Strip, featuring Russell Simmons, sent to Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, and Ryan Seacrest is a prime example.
What do I really care? And yet there I was clicking away. It’s like sneaking peek at the pretty girl changing clothes behind your back. You’re not supposed to look, but it so hard to resist.
Screenwriter and producer Ed Fletcher delivers his pitch for "Pink" at the 2014 American Film Market as pitch expert and forum moderator Stephanie Palmer looks on.
By Ed Fletcher
Armed with a stack of business cards, some new pink ties and a four-day pass ($500), I recently attended American Film Market in Santa Monica, one of the world’s largest film markets, to develop or sell my screenplay Pink. For more information on Pink, a sexy dramatic comedy based on Sacramento’s 1969 bottomless stripper trial, read my blog or find us on Facebook. What follows is a rundown of things I learned or reconfirmed from attending American Film Market for the first time and as someone new to film.
Hollywood is not about openness or inclusion. It’s a meritocracy based on your ability to make them money. That’s not an indictment, just real talk.
In the film world there are creative types and business types. AFM is more for the business types. It ain’t called a market for nothing.
There is little demand for comedies, dramas, sports movies or urban movies overseas. As a result, there are an exorbitant number of low budget thrillers, action movies and beast/zombie movies being made and marketed.
Getting on stage at the Pitch Conference can make you interesting to all the other filmmakers in the room, but since heavy hitters were in the their temporary sales offices blocks away, you’re still a nobody to them.
Just because somebody retweets you doesn’t mean you’re somebody to them.
Having a good pitch is one thing, but have it packaged (name director or talent signed on) and you’re cookin’. I wasn’t cooking.
Wearing a Pink tie everyday was a great idea. Who forgets the Black guy, wearing a pink tie, and talking about a screenplay named Pink?
Cell phones are a security blanket for people afraid to be alone. It’s hard to spark up a conversation when people are checking their security blanket.
The Producer Forums are popular: Get there early. Disregard this if you have a confirmed “producers” credit and can skip the line.
Despite the new ways to network through social media, nothing beats spending time in the lobby bar in terms of making connections.
The event offers a bevy of high level forums on the film business.
The rooms of two Santa Monica hotels are turned into temporary film offices.
Ed Fletcher posing for a picture at American Film Market 2014.
When I was a little kid and even into adolescence, I loved to take risks.
In those days of perfect knees, I jumped from roofs, moving trucks and once from one moving speed boat to another. I thought nothing of taking a ski jump within weeks of learning to ski.
Like most people, as the years moved along I found myself taking fewer risks.
I ski with the goal of not falling. I keep the cruise control set at 75 mph as to not get a ticket. And I’ve sought comfort in my work environment.
On one hand, comfort and safety is a beautiful thing in this troubled economic climate. But on the other hand, it can be constricting and confining when your heart wants to soar.
Illustration by Val Mina
The instability of the journalism industry pushed me to do something I should have been doing all along: taking risks.
A three years, ago I started screenwriting and performing improv. Two days before my 40th birthday I hosted a comedy show and performed stand up.
Now I’m on my way to Santa Monica for the American Film Market conference in hopes of selling my screenplay or packaging it as an independent film. Here's the logline for those new to this blog: A free-speech loving exotic dancer battles a small-town sheriff and bares it all to prove her "bottomless" dance is art worthy of protection in this sexy dramatic comedy based on a real 1969 case.
I’m characterizing it as a risk, but is it really?
Based on my submitted video pitch, I’ll already by pitching the script during the pitch session, so at worst I bomb the pitch, but salvage the weekend by taking notes at some very valuable forums and meeting a distributor interested in the film once its a completed.
But how likely is that? I’ve been a rally commissioner, scout camp leader, improv performer, television host, stand up comedian, and “the Voice” at Burning Man.
The upside: I nail the pitch, meet Jennifer Lawrence’s agent Jeremy Plager in the lobby bar, we get hammered, end up back at her place, she challenges to a beer chugging contest, loses and agrees to star in my film.
Here is to taking risks that arn’t too risky.
Like Pink Film on Facebook and follow @edfletcher on twitter for reports from the road. Hell I might even Instagram some famous people if my battery survives.
