Hudson's group advised one filmmaker who was discovered later to be financing his film with the profits from his hydroponic pot farm and another who was trying to raise money from the Russian mob, though she declines to name them for obvious reasons.
"We had a filmmaker who mortgaged his grandmother's house. That's a sad story," Hudson says, but not uncommon.
"We do a whole forum around these cautionary tales."
"One of the first things we've done is revise the budget downward to make the film more commensurate with the marketplace," says indie producer Joshua Zeman, who's trying to raise less than $2 million for "Forest Grove." "Grove" is the first narrative feature from Jonathan Caouette, who made a splash in 2004 with his super-low-budget "Tarnation," an autobiographical documentary about growing up with a schizophrenic mother. The new film, about a boy who swims in the pools of a gated community, features no stars. "You can't make the film on the backs of actors," Zeman says. "A lot of the onus is on a great, great script. We're really looking for an angel."
Personal contact
Actress-writer-producer Sybil Temtchine has raised about half of the $600,000 budget for her film "Audrey" from female business leaders. About a year ago, she sat in a Borders and collected the name of every famous female author who'd written a book that somehow touched on female empowerment, from Suze Orman to Marianne Williamson. She wrote to 200 of them, and sent a link to her short film "Piece A' Cake," which was the launching point for her proposed feature, a comedy about female insecurity.
About 75% of the women wrote back. Some sent checks and others introduced her to women's organizations like 85 Broads, which support women entrepreneurs. 85 Broads' founder Janet Hanson "blogged about us. It was the greatest blog, like only a mother would write," Temtchine says. An actress who has appeared in TV shows and films, Temtchine intends to play the lead and opted not to fill out the ensemble cast with name actors because that's a process that can take years. "I felt that this was a hard route, but no harder than waiting around for 10 years," she says.
Carin's Nation ad was not her idea, but the brainchild (and gift) of marketing consultant Stephen Brown, a board member of the Latin American Workshop, a nonprofit arts and education organization in New York City, which also is sponsoring Carin's movie.
