Zach Braff has gotten a lot
of publicity this week – both positive & negative. He’s been criticized about his crowdfunding
campaign but he’s also raised $2.5 million on Kickstarter for his new film Wish I Was Here. Personally I am torn about Braff’s fundraising
success. In his Kickstarter video, Braff
says he didn’t want private “money people” to have final cut or dictate casting
choices. This is a very good
argument. Woody Allen built an entire
career based upon this after a horrible experience making What’s New Pussycat. But
there are a lot of indie filmmakers (Ed Burns, Noah Baumbach, Mark & Jay
Duplass, etc.) who have commercial success and Hollywood
connections (like Braff) and also make indie after indie without selling their
souls. But it also doesn’t say anywhere
on Kickstarter’s website that one has to be starving artist to apply.
It’s easy to criticize
famous people – because they’re out there – visible. I heard one criticism on TV (I think it was SNL?!) - “Hey Zach – here’s an idea - how about using some of that Scrubs money?” But in his very funny, very persuasive video,
Braff is very convincing about involving all backers in the process and also confirms
that he is in fact contributing an “ass-ton” of his own money. It’s an interesting process – based on how
much you donate, there are benefits promised, from t-shirts to invitations to
screenings. And apparently backers
receive a lot of updates during the process as well. It sounds cool. I’m actually thinking of kicking in (pun intended)
$10 just to get emails from Zach Braff.
He’s a funny guy.
I think the idea of crowdfunding
in general is creatively brilliant & just plain inspired. People need money for something and they ask
THE WORLD for help. Love it. Recently, actress Karen Black raised over
$45,000 on Gofundme after she spent all of her money from making movies with
Jack Nicholson trying to cure her cancer.
Essentially, the world can help save her life. That’s damn cool. Is making movies anywhere near as important
as saving a life? Maybe. I personally can’t imagine my life if no one
ever made another independent film.
The world is changing very
rapidly. We live most of our lives
online. The economy sucks. A lot of things are harder than they used to
be. Even Woody Allen left New York to make movies for a while because it was easier
to get funding in Europe. Zach Braff is very social media savvy. Maybe this is the only way that he can
conceive of doing this project. Maybe he
just doesn’t want to be alone. Maybe Braff’s
a trailblazer and this is the way of things to come. All I can say is that Garden State is one of the most unique films I’ve ever seen and I’d
like to see what else he has to offer.
Let's continue a
dialogue about this. What do you think?
