I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell - June 23, 2008

In my last piece about working with professionals, I talked about how every time we wanted to make a change that cost more money, Nils, Sean, Bob, Eve and I always said the same thing, "Let's run it by Darren and see if he can work it into the budget." A lot of people wrote me about this, and didn't understand or misunderstood my point, so I want to elaborate on how and what it's like to work on a movie with a tight budget.

The first thing you have to understand is that there are many many different ways to make a movie, and each way presents its own problems and issues. For instance, if this was a studio movie, the Line Producer would probably have been hired by the studio and would in essence be their axeman; the battles with him would probably be contentious and detrimental to the creative output. It doesn't have to be this way, but more often than not, the studio executives are so focused on the bottom line they cripple the artistic efforts of the creatives.

But we are making an independent movie, so it's not the same situation here. Though we have a hard cap ten million dollar budget, and though Darren is in charge of keeping the production below that, he isn't the enemy (for fucks sake, I am the one who hired Darren, so obviously he is on our side). His goal is the same as ours: Make the best movie possible within the budget (as opposed to save the most money possible). We--Bob, Nils, Eve and I--realize that Darren has to enforce this limit because if he doesn't, we run out of money early and the whole movie is fucked, but at the same time, we want to squeeze as much as possible out of the budget.

What this creates is a sort of low level artistic friction that makes everyone think not in terms of "how do I get what I want" but rather, "can we make this happen, and how do we do it?" (this is opposed to the standard high level friction between a money-hoarding studio and free-spending artists that usually just fuck shit up). And though I never would have thought this would be the case, as far as I have seen, this friction has made the movie better. It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes limits on art can force the best out of it.

Sean McKittrick explained it to me as such, "When you have just a little bit less money than what you need, it forces you to focus on what's truly important in the story, and get that right. It makes you cut the fat and get to the meat, which is all anyone wants to see anyway." Considering this dude made a classic movie on a budget LESS than what we are doing our movie on, it would be wise for me to shut up and listen to him.

I would love to give you specific examples of how this has played out on our movie thus far, but that's going to have to wait until the DVD because I can't really do that without giving away plot and story details. I will give you a general example that I think will explain how this is played out on this movie:

The strip club. As has already been released, the plot revolves around a bachelor party at a strip club. Originally, the strip club was going to be based on the old Baby Dolls in Dallas, that I described as such in my original Austin Road Trip Story,

Baby Dolls should be the model from which all strip clubs are cast. The neon glow from its trim-molding and signage can be seen from miles away. A huge pink one-story stand-alone building rising out of a sea of asphalt with pictures of nearly naked girls on the 4-story billboard looming over it from the parking lot. The entrance is two huge wooden doors adorned with brass fixtures and two NFL linebacker-sized bouncers. It is covered by a pink awning that extends up the walk about ten feet. The huge oval main stage is flanked by an enfilade of four smaller side stages, each with a brass pole reaching from floor to ceiling. Mirrors cover every wall and extend to every ceiling. Two full bars, and two beer bars are staffed by a phalanx of female bartenders and cocktail waitresses. And MOST importantly: it's all nude. No pasties. No g-strings. No crotch tape. Nothing between you and the naked, nubile flesh of attractive women...except dollar bills. The girls were hot beyond hot. Dozens of incredibly beautiful and sexy women, each giving smiles that conveyed the sincerity of a single mother with rent due.

Of course, I wanted to build a set that mirrored this exactly and shoot it all in there. Fat chance. That would have busted the shit out of the budget (just on the interior alone). So we had to find another solution. Russell ended up getting ahold of this amazing old building that used to be...well, you're just going to have to see when it comes out. But needless to say, by not having unlimited money to spend, we had to rethink the assumptions of the plot and distill everything down to its core elements, focus on those, and then be creative about the solution. It even forced us to make small plot changes to accommodate the new location, and Nils and I turned that problem into a solution that not only saved us money, but made the story better.

This situation works as long as everyone is on the same page and has the same goal--to make the best movie possible. If that's the case, then this sort of creative friction works. But it doesn't always work of course. You can have someone in a key position of a film who sucks, and that throws everything off. When people start to think in terms of what benefits them personally, or put really any goal above doing what makes the movie better, that's when you get problems. And of course there is a point where you are no longer cutting fat, and have started cutting meat, which does make the movie worse.

We don't have the problem of having someone who sucks, which is very nice, because I don't deal well with people who suck. From day one on this movie, every personnel decision was made by asking two questions, 1. Can they do the job? and 2. Are they good to work with (I am actually doing a big post about that specific issue soon). And though we have come close to cutting meat a few times on this movie, we haven't done that yet, thankfully, mainly due to the excellent budget management of the accountant and line producer, and the genius of the creative team (mostly me, of course).

For those of you outside the film business, I can't explain to you how rare it is to have a situation like this, where everyone is not only capable and talented, but they are all working towards a common creative goal along with a financing team that understands that sometimes you have to spend a little money to get the creative aspect right and is willing to back its creatives. And if you are in the film business, you either wish you were working on a movie like that, or think I am full of shit because you think these situations exist only in fairy tales.

All I can say is that--so far--we have that situation, and it's a true joy to work on a movie where everyone shares a common goal, and watch it come together. This is what collaboration should be like.

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Posted by Tucker Max at 6:07 AM