BLAIR WITCH co-director’s next film going straight-to-DVD! PART V
PART I - PART II - PART III - PART IV
2006 will go down as one of the worse years of my professional life. There isn’t any aspect of my abilities that I haven’t completely doubted this year. There were a lot of dark paths that I went down in 2006, a lot of sleepless nights.
Personally, things couldn’t have been better. My family, friends and especially my partners are responsible for me being able to get through it with only some sleeping problems and three or so tiny ulcers in my stomach.
Gregg, Rob, Mike, Jamie, Bob, Jeff and Matt have been great. They know I’m disappointed but they all feel proud of the film and have shown nothing but total support for what I’ve been going through.
One day after some meeting in New York, Gregg told me “ALTERED doesn’t suck. We made a good film. And even if you think it sucks, great directors make bad films sometimes. No one is batting 1000.”
I don’t think the film sucks. I really don’t. I LOVED this film before December of last year, before all the screenings. But the road since then has been very hard and nothing is quite as painful as people not digging my work. It’s like people not loving your kids. It’s hard, man, and I don’t know how artists do it, to tell you the truth. It’s one of these things that I’ve examined in myself this year wondering if my skin was tough enough to keep going through this shit with every film. The jury is still out on that one.
At this point, less than a week until the release of the film, I honestly just want to be done with ALTERED. I want to move on. What reaction do I expect? Well, some people will dig it, some people will think it’s all right, and some people will hate it. What else can I say? Maybe it’ll do great on DVD. Maybe it’ll flop.
We’re not angry at FOCUS or ROGUE or UNIVERSAL or anyone on that side of the equation. They’ve been nothing but fair and very cool to us and as great a partner as we’ll ever get as a studio is concerned. After our hardships with ARTISAN after BLAIR WITCH blew up, we really appreciate the fact that they’ve always treated us with the utmost respect. They did what they needed to do with ALTERED and if we were in their shoes, we would’ve done the same thing. We really hope to make more films with them.
We on the ALTERED side of things all believe in the film. Last month, we began our own little marketing campaign with UNIVERSAL’S (who is distributing the film on DVD) approval and paid for with our own money. We’ve all been working hard on it, we still want to get the film out there to as many people as possible, we still support the film 100%.
But we’re not hiding from the fact that everyone, including ourselves, expected that this film was going to go theatrical. I mean, how can you go from one of the biggest INDIE successes of all time to a straight-to-DVD release? How?
Well, like this. We just did it, folks, and even though pretty much every word of these five blogs was painful to write, we’re not afraid to talk about it, because in the end, it’s just another movie.
Don’t get me wrong, I love ALTERED. I think it’s a fine piece of work and fun as shit and I’m really proud of the work all my collaborators and I did on the film. But it’s just my next film. My next film after a tiny, 30K, shot on HI-8 feature that happened to become THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
My partners and I will make more films. We’re already working on a few things for next year, including a slate of films we hope to shoot in China. Gregg will direct one. I will direct one. Bob and Matt are involved already. I’m writing my script with Jamie. Rob, Mike and Andy are ready to get involved again as soon as their time comes. We’re all still together. The band hasn’t broken up.
ALTERED has taught me many things, but the biggest lesson I learned is that this is the group of people I want to continue to make films with. I couldn’t have asked for a better filmmaking family. Talented and smart and sexy as hell, too.
I ain’t no SCORCESE, people, and these guys know that and still want to make films with me. That’s what family is all about, isn’t it?
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