Producing is a Joke

Producing these frigging student movies is a joke. You know the right actor, you know the right location, you know the right every frigging thing and you're even flexible with good back up plans and so forth - but you can't afford shit. Especially locations. You find a great place, let's use it, but you can't because it costs so much money...which brings me to another thing.

Saw Palindromes the other night. Pretty bad movie with a few amazing moments. But I was sitting there watching - it's basically a student sized film, similar with Broken Flowers (which was quite good), and thinking to myself - who the fuck would pay $14 to see this movie? I wouldn't. I saw it at the New Bev for $6 and I guess it was worth it to get out of the house and go out and blah, blah. But $14 - no way. And yet, that is the cost of seeing a film at the Arclight and the Grove and I'm thinking how is this economic model going to work for us? Can I make a film that I legitimately think people should pay $14 for. No. I could make a film worth $7 to maybe $9 bucks...where I think the audience would be entertained for 2 hours and that would be worth it. But $14, come on. It's too much. So how does one make anything interesting these days? Palindromes was made on the cheap and it was bad...but films like that should be made, cheap, with the potential of being insightful and good - we all know the early 1990s indy movement - cheap, entertaining, good. With the costs so high for seeing films in the theater, no one wants to risk three Palindromes for one Welcome to the Dollhouse. I don't see how this model works...