Woman allowed to participate in THR Studio Exec Oscar roundtable; she reminds us Battleship was failure

In anticipation of awards season, The Hollywood Reporter held its first Studio Executive Oscar roundtable discussion, and as if to highlight the gender disparity at the highest management levels of the major Hollywood studios, allowed one woman—Universal co-chairman Donna Langley—to occupy a seat. Langley was quick to point out, though, that making disastrous, artless, wrong-headed business decisions is not the sole providence of white men in their 60s.

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November 2nd, 2012 | Category: In Theaters Now, MM First Look | By James Kaelan

Comments: 1

Craig denies next Bond film will be two-parter, instead will merely be Part 24

In the wake of humongous opening-week numbers overseas, near-universal critical acclaim, and the tacit endorsement of the friggin’ Pope, all’s well for the venerable James Bond franchise. As such, Skyfall screenwriter John Logan has been rewarded with the keys to both the 24th and 25th installments, fueling speculation he may be plotting a heretofore unprecedented multi-film arc.

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November 1st, 2012 | Category: Happenings, In Theaters Now, Notes From Movieland | By James Kaelan

Comments: 1

JUST CROWDFUND THE $&*# MOVIE: Strange Interlude — "Sunburn" Part II

When we last left off, the production of our short film, "Sunburn," had capsized after being kicked out of our first location (not our fault!). In spite of our bad luck and thanks to the kindness of Sasha Eden, who plays one of the “Housewives” in a fictional show within our show, Day 2 offered shelter in her production studio, WET. We loaded in that very night, quiet as church mice, and prepped for the shoot. In hindsight, these things seem to happen for a reason. True, we did lose stunning views of the NYC harbor from 26 floors above the city, but we gained access to offices that actually resembled a working television network.

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November 1st, 2012 | Category: | By Jayce Bartok

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MovieMaker's Instagram MovieMaker of the Week

MovieMaker is excited to announce its new Instagram Moviemaker of the Week program!

Last Monday, MovieMaker kicked off its new Instagram MovieMaker of the Week program. What's that, you ask? Well, every week (or two), MovieMaker will be lending out its Instagram account to an intrepid filmmaker in production on a new feature. Speaking of which, are you an intrepid filmmaker going into production on a new feature? If so, write to and let him know you're interested!

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October 19th, 2012 | Category: MM First Look | By James Kaelan

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Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie: Strange Interlude - Sunburn

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve blogged for MovieMaker, and many of you may be wondering where the hell I've been. Well, when you're trying desperately to make one project happen, that’s usually when the universe (in this instance, the executive producer of my film The Cake Eaters) decides that another project, languishing on the sidelines, suddenly needs to take precedence.

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October 9th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 7

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie: Start the Presses!

Another week, another panel! Last week, I found myself on a crowdfunding panel hosted by Michael Helman and Stella McGovern of Crowdzu, a new crowdfunding platform joining the ranks. The talk was the usual – make a damn fine passionate video, build a team, up your Facebook fans and ‘likes’, and work the social network to make your campaign a success.

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September 20th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 2

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Can You Repeat That?

Today I turn 40 years old. Whoa. It’s definitely a day to step back and reflect. 40 feels like halfway there, right? I’ve put 40 good years of experience behind me, and now I’ve got to use what I’ve learned and go! Which brings me to today’s topic: Can you crowdfund for a project not just once, but twice—even three times—until you’ve crossed that finish line? And an even bigger question: Can you crowdfund from the same pool of supporters for more than one project over a number of years, having those friends become, in a way, your own private movie studio?

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July 31st, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 34

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Finding Your .Com Home

OK. It’s become apparent to me that, as with camera tech-y talk, I have been avoiding any discussion of social media in my posts. One of the big issues when embarking on a crowdfunding campaign is where to build your home, your base of operations, your platform for all things “my movie”-related... and, most importantly, how to not dilute your movie’s message by splitting your fan base between the gazillion social networking options currently out there.

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July 17th, 2012 | Category: | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 40

Directing on a Dime: Getting to Know Bindlestiffs

Bindlestiffs is the story of three high school virgins who, after getting suspended from school on a bogus graffiti charge, flee to the inner city in an attempt to live out the plot of The Catcher in the Rye—a book they don't understand and have never actually read. The brainchild of Andrew Edison and Luke Loftin, two high school friends who also starred in the film, the film began shaping up to be the low-budget success story of the year after it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival. To add to their golden ticket, the film's since been championed by the king of raunchy low-budget film himself: Kevin Smith.

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July 13th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young

Comments: 41

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Tiny Dancer... The Video Game?

Recently I had the privilege to sit on a panel on crowdfunding at NYC’s Beneath the Earth Film Festival. This is the second, maybe even third, panel I’ve been asked to sit on since I started blogging for MovieMaker. It kind of amazes me that somehow I’ve become an “expert” on crowdfunding. I find myself slipping into the same “We got Kevin Smith to tweet about Tiny Dancer” storytelling vibe (people laugh, I feel good)... until I sit back and realize: Wait! We haven’t finished Tiny Dancer. And maybe I’m far from an expert.


I shared the panel with two talented filmmakers who did finish their films, and I’d like to recap a little of their magic and mojo (since mine is barely glimmering in the heat of the summer).

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July 11th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 25

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: With a Little Help from Our Friends...

Happy (early) Independence Day to all you independent filmmakers and artists hustling to make it happen outside the regime. Let’s all light a roman candle and say that if a few scrappy Americans could throw off the Brits (no disrespect, I love my Brits), then we can certainly make our movies. But one thing we can’t do it without is friends. A few good friends can mean more than thousands of dollars added to your budget.

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July 3rd, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 30

MM Remembers: Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, the director behind rom-com classics You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle (both of which she also wrote), passed away yesterday in her home city of New York from pneumonia brought about by acute myeloid leukemia. She was 71.

The director/screenwriter/producer, also a reporter, novelist, essayist and playwright—she makes most other moviemakers look like absolute slackers—had her last film credits with 2009's Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, which Ephron directed, wrote and produced. In a time when behind-the-scenes roles in the film industry are still heavily dominated by men—and when the comedic chops of females are still for some reason called into question—Ephron is a shining and much-needed example for women in the film industry.

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June 27th, 2012 | Category: MM Remembers | By Rebecca Pahle

Comments: 33

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The Taxing Side of Crowdfunding

A few days ago, friend and fellow producer Christopher Shea e-mailed me with a question about his girlfriend’s successful crowdfunding campaign, for her film The Quiet Girl's Guide to Violence. Chris wrote: “I guess what I'm curious about is now that we've raised this money, and after we kick back to Kickstarter and Amazon the percentages due to them, how much should we expect to pay back to the federal government?” A cold trickle ran down my neck. Government? Taxes? What?!? This sounds horrible. Paying taxes on hard-earned money coaxed from our crowds?! What’s next, taxing us for drinking coffee? Hmmmm. I think they already do that.

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June 27th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 24

Directing on a Dime: Jay Duplass Talks Kevin

This was my fourth time interviewing Jay Duplass. Listening to Jay talk about making movies is eerily similar to what it would probably be like to talk about destiny with Jeff from Jay and his brother Mark's latest studio film, Jeff Who Lives at Home. So if anyone were going to make a documentary about a musician like Kevin Gant, it would have to be Jay.

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June 22nd, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young

Comments: 24

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: You Never Know Where Your Message Will Take You

There is truly nothing more empowering than having actual money in the bank for the production of your film. Two weeks have passed since our Producer’s Dinner to raise money for Tiny Dancer, and in that time Tiffany and I have been collecting checks from our amazing investors, moving money from PayPal to our LLC (damn those service fees!) and draining our NYFA account of crowdfunded donations. As the number in our bank account climbs, I start to feel like we are actually going to be able to make our film. But what version of Tiny Dancer are we going to be able to make?

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June 19th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 23

Directing on a Dime: Dan Eckman Finds His "Community"

If you're a loyal Greendale Human Being—a fan of the NBC comedy "Community," for those not in the know—who also happens to make movies, you may have wondered at one point what it would be like to work on the cult favorite show. Recently, I sat down for my second interview with Derrick Comedy/Mystery Team director Dan Eckman, who directed the 13th episode of season three, "Digital Exploration of Interior Design," in which Britta (Gillian Jacobs) falls for Subway—that's a person, by the way—and the friendship of Abed (Danny Pudi) and Troy Barnes (Derrick Comedy member Donald Glover) is tested by an emerging pillow fort-vs-blanket fort rivalry.

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June 15th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young

Comments: 32

Mixed Reviews: My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey through Hollywood

If there’s one family that deserves to be called Hollywood royalty, it's the Mankiewicz clan. The iconoclastic brood has produced two Oscar-winners: Highly prolific writer-producer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, Guys and Dolls) and his older brother Herman, the screenwriter behind Citizen Kane and The Pride of the Yankees. My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider’s Journey through Hollywood (University Press of Kentucky, 400 pages, $39.95), co-written by Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane, provides an intimate perspective of what it was like to be a part of such a legendary family. Tom is the son of Joseph and grew up on his father’s movie sets. The memoir is being published posthumously; Tom died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at the age of 68.

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June 13th, 2012 | Category: Mixed Reviews | By Kyle Rupprecht

Comments: 24

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Finding Your Inner Shark

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try... and make sure no one leaves the room without investing! Thank the Movie Gods, our Producer’s Dinner event, hosted by Bobbie Thomas last Monday night at the loft of Patrick Morris and Kate White, was a success. Finally! We secured $14,000 in investments; add that to the $25,000 we raised through donations, and our total raised so far is $39,000. Is that enough? Almost.

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June 12th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 20

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The Final Countdown

Tiffany and I woke up yesterday morning from some sort of fever dream. The Tiny Dancer Producer’s Dinner is in less than one week... and is anyone coming? We jumped to our computers and found that, finally, we had started to get RSVPs, people actually saying they will invest and attend our event to (hopefully) raise the last half of Tiny Dancer’s budget. For the first time in quite a few weeks we started to breathe easily.

Just as we were going about processing credit card payments, Tiff sent me this breakdown of the JOBS Act on Ted Hope’s awesome site Hope For Film. I studied and scoured the article, hoping we aren’t in some way violating the Acts to come. It looks like we are OK, but what is interesting about the piece is that, as much as I and many others have been singing the praises of the coming JOBS Act, there are some drawbacks to it.

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May 30th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 18

Directing on a Dime: Bumper to Bumper with Joe Nicolosi

If you’ve attended SXSW in the past three years, then you’ve already seen the work of Joe Nicolosi. Prominently known for shooting some amazing bumpers for the SXSW Film Festival, his shorts—among them a look at a production company specializing in cat videos, a Lego version of CSI, Star Wars as retold by someone who's never seen Star Wars and a faux-indie Mario Brothers trailer—have gone viral time and time again, proving that Nicolosi knows how to reach an online audience.

I talked to Joe about growing up in the suburbs, making his infamous SXSW bumpers and the three things it takes to be a successful moviemaker.

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May 25th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young

Comments: 21

Mixed Reviews: Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman

Is there a more controversial actor working today than Christian Bale? From his start as an impressive child actor (Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun) to his emergence as a bonafide movie star after taking on the iconic role of Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Bale has certainly had a whirlwind ride in Hollywood. He’s also had plenty of inner demons to shake, as Harrison Cheung and Nicola Pittam’s new biography, Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman (BenBella Books, 312 pages, $15.95), details.

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May 23rd, 2012 | Category: Mixed Reviews | By Kyle Rupprecht

Comments: 36

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Going "No and Pro"

Can you hear Tiffany and I rejoicing? We found a celebrity host for the June 4th Producer’s Dinner we're holding to court investors for our film Tiny Dancer: Bobbie Thomas, the beautiful style editor for NBC’s "The Today Show." Why Bobbie Thomas, you might ask? Well, Tiny Dancer is about two women struggling to find their inner meaning and, in a sense, their inner beauty as well. Ms. Thomas, who began her career as a rape crisis counselor, has been quoted as saying “Beauty truly comes from the strength within.” Damn... that could be the tagline for our film! We are thrilled to have her as our Guest of Honor.

Tiffany and I have been going here and there trying to widen our circle and spread the exciting news that we are now accepting investments in Tiny Dancer, whereas before we were a non-profit working solely off of donations. The donate vs. investment mentality is fascinating to me. Where does the distinction come from?

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May 22nd, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 21

Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Needed—One Celebrity

So we have our LLC set up for Tiny Dancer (it’s amazing how fast you can create a business in this country), we’ve finalized our invitation for the June 4th event and we’ve sent out e-mails letting our supporters know that we have changed our plan of attack to “invest.” We’ve had a few responses requesting our PPM and business plan and are keeping our fingers crossed that we can get some investors. I spent the weekend casually trying to talk up what good sense it makes to invest in Tiny Dancer at the numerous birthday parties we took our son to. But we still have no celebrity host for our upcoming event.

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May 15th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok

Comments: 19

Directing on a Dime: Summer Reading List

After pulling a 33-hour sprint through post-production on my final project, I am now officially done with my first semester of film school at the University of Texas! As you can tell from the start of the sentence above, it was a bit of a doozy. But now summer is here, and I’ll be busy seeing new movies, doing interviews for MovieMaker, taking some summer school classes and shooting my next short film. And, of course, catching up on some books I’ve been meaning to read. For this week’s article I decided to make a “Summer Reading List” of books I want to recommend to other low-budget moviemakers. These are some of my favorite books of all time, books I’ve read and studied a thousand times over that have really influenced the way I watch movies and work on set.

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May 11th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young

Comments: 22

Mixed Reviews: The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Music on Film Series

Nearly 40 years after its initial release, The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains amazingly popular. Still shown at midnight screenings around the world, it has the distinction of being the longest-running theatrical release in film history, having originally opened in 1975. Not bad for a bizarre, low-budget horror-comedy rock musical that introduced “sweet transvestite” Dr. Frank-N-Furter to the general public. The history and influence of this weirdly influential film is recounted in Dave Thompson’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the latest entry in the Music on Film series.

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May 9th, 2012 | Category: Mixed Reviews | By Kyle Rupprecht

Comments: 20

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