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“MY HOPE IS GRANDCHILDREN”
The ubiquitous but broke boyfriend-and-girlfriend filmmakers behind Four-Eyed Monsters get another jolt of publicity today as they become the poster children for Charles Lyons in his New York Times piece on the personal financial perils of indie-film financing.
From the piece:
“[Arin] Crumley and [Susan] Buice spoke about their 14-month ordeal making Four Eyed Monsters, which dramatizes how they met online, and in which they co-star. The movie was well received at its Slamdance Film Festival premiere in January and screened at 16 other festivals. But like so many independent labors of love, it has yet to attract a theatrical distributor.
‘If the result was going to be this,’ Mr. Crumley mused, ‘a film with no distributor, no way for anyone to ever get a chance to see it beyond those who saw it at a few festivals, would I have done it? That’s a tough question to answer.’ Ms. Buice added: ‘The answer is, no, it’s not O.K. for our film to have been mildly successful on the festival circuit. But otherwise, it was just a jaunt into the abyss and now we have financial hell to pay.’
The first-time filmmakers used their $10,000 in savings to begin production and borrowed $55,000 on seven credit cards to complete the film. Ms. Buice’s parents have contributed $20,000 more for film festival travel and living expenses.”
Lyons’ piece, which updates Doug Block’s 1991 doc The Heck with Hollywood, engages in some abbreviated handwringing over all the folks losing money in independent film.
But, as Susan Buice’s father points out in the film’s video podcast this week, “there are all kinds of investment and financial is just one of [them].” Staring at Crumley behind the camera, her mom, explaining why she wants to support Susan and her new boyfriend, cuts to the chase: “My hope is grandchildren.”
