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INTRODUCTION

WHO AM I?

Growing Up

My love for the film industry started when I was very young — too young to imagine anything other than fame and fortune in the world of movies. The truth, I’d learn later on, is that film is a business, and it’s not an easy business! But for most of my early life, from my bedroom in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, all I could visualize were the bright lights and happy faces of Hollywood.

I started as an actor. My first role was playing Captain Hook in my fourth grade production of Peter Pan (Peter was played by a female). The years from fifth through eighth grade were hard for me because there was no theater program at our middle school and, hence, I had no outlet. So I resorted to being the class clown, which landed me in the principal’s office almost daily.

High school became a busy time for my acting career. I was the star of all the plays and musicals at Hunterdon Central, a fantastic school in Flemington, New Jersey. I had my sights set on the big time!

When it came time to pick a college, I tried to lay the groundwork for my future career. I had heard Montclair University (in Montclair, New Jersey) had a great acting program, and, if I attended, I would be living just minutes from New York City. Perfect. I got accepted as an undergraduate in the theater program right away.

But the program wasn’t what I had hoped for. I wasn’t interested in classes that were aimed at the least talented people in the room. I needed to excel. So I switched my major to communications and chose film studies as a minor. I didn’t know if I was making the right choice. I actually thought I might have ruined my future. Thankfully, a chance meeting in New York City’s Little Italy put me back on track.

Gravesend

It was the summer of 1994 and I was sitting with my family outside Il Fornaio on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, despite my protests (I had wanted to eat inside because of the heat, and I had also wanted to eat at a different restaurant). A young waiter named Sal came up to our table and asked, “What can I get you?” My uncle, a jokester visiting from California, replied, “What can we get you?” Sal laughed and responded, “How about some money to make my feature film?”

My ears perked up. “You’re making a feature film?” I asked. “Well, I’m an actor.” And that was it. My big “discovery.”

After several auditions, Sal cast me as one of the four lead roles in Gravesend, Sal’s semi-autobiographical street film about Brooklyn. What followed were three years of shooting, reshooting, torture, and general hell on earth. There’s still folklore associated with the film. I can’t attest to all of it, but I will say that we did shoot the movie for $5000, we did tap into street lamps (illegally) to light scenes, and we did do moronic things such as pull up to a gang of thugs on a street corner and ask, “Do you want to shoot a fight scene?” Real fights broke out almost nightly.

But the other actors and I myself were not giving up. I had it especially tough because I was the youngest, and I had no job because I was in college. Getting paid for this movie was out of the question; I’ve still never even seen a penny from it. I would shoot all night long and then drive back to Montclair from Brooklyn and go to class. Then I’d repeat the process the next night.

My persistence paid off (if not financially). By 1997, Gravesend became a hit, kind of. Oliver Stone lent his name as a producer and presented the film. The film had mixed reviews, but some of the most important publications such as Variety, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times all raved about it. There are still people out there who consider Gravesend the quintessential Brooklyn street film, and the only film to be made in the Cassavettes style in years.

I remember being in Los Angeles in 1998 when Gravesend was released to theaters. I foolishly thought I would be returning to New York City to find a mailbox full of scripts. I was wrong.

Gravesend made me a “hot item” for about thirty days. And then, as fast as it came, it was gone. In that short period I got some of the best auditions in the world, but the roles kept going to established actors who were already famous. Looking back, I believe one of my errors was not hiring a publicist. But hindsight is 20/20, and I soon found myself without an agent, without a job, and without a prayer, living in New York City.

The Next Step

There aren’t many jobs for out-of-work actors besides restaurant-industry positions. I had a special talent, though. I’d been a computer expert my whole life and I knew how to make money doing it. So that became my “support until” job.

SIDE NOTE

I’ve always hated the term fall back. People told me for years that I needed a career to “fall back on.” What a horrible phrase! It implies you are “falling” and going “backward.” I made the conscious decision in those hard times in New York to change the phrase to “support until.” This way, I could look at any job and simply say, “This job is supporting me until I make it in the film business.”

I realized rather quickly that the only way to get what I wanted in the movie world was to try to learn every aspect of it. My free time was spent reading industry books, watching videos, and talking to people, all to get knowledge of the business in which I wanted so much to work.

During those six to seven years, I became a very strong writer through much hard work and persistence. At the time of this publication, I’ve optioned, sold, or had movies made from eight of the twelve scripts I’ve written. I’m now in the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and have made lots of money through my writing.

In the meantime, I also started to realize that the person who holds all the cards is the producer… and not just any producer. More specifically, the producer who had the money or controlled the money. This would become an important discovery.

AnySwing Goes

Around the summer of 2002, I wrote a movie called AnySwing Goes, a dance film/romantic comedy. I created the lead role of Ethan specifically for myself. I had been taking dance lessons in West Coast Swing, a bluesy, slinky form of swing that’s danced to hip-hop, R&B, pop, and country. I was getting pretty good, so I figured this movie could showcase my multiple talents. More than that, I assumed that knowledge of dance gave me job security. If they tried to cast Matt Damon in my role, I could fight back and say, “He can’t dance like I can!”

Right away I optioned AnySwing Goes for $10,000 to a producer who supposedly controlled these big investors who were going to invest $2 million into the film. I was so wide-eyed and innocent, I would have signed any contract and given away any rights, as long as I got to play that role. And that, unfortunately, is what I did.

I’ll save you the horribly depressing details and just condense it to this: The producer (who never had money to begin with) screwed me and lied to me in every way possible for the next three years. He continually dangled the carrot that the movie was “just about to start.” He’d tell me July, and once July came, he’d tell me September. Once September came, he’d tell me January. And, like a fool, I kept believing in him and hoping and praying that he was going to make my film. He eventually tried to steal the script and make it his own, and kick me out of the project. I didn’t have any money to sue him, so I basically walked away and let him self-destruct, which he did, several months later. Finally, everyone involved knew he was a liar.

Though it was a personal victory, it didn’t help me financially. It was 2005. I had no job (except for the little computer gigs I would do here and there), and now I found out that my wife, whom I had been married to for about six months, was now pregnant.

The Attic

Desperation can lead to great things. My whole life, I had been an avid fan of scary and horror movies, so I figured I would abandon the mess of AnySwing and write a thriller. Within one month, I completed a script for The Attic, a psychological thriller about one girl’s haunting in the midst of family troubles. By the end of the next month, I had Mary Lambert, the director of Pet Sematary, attached to direct.

Now I needed the money. I had written the script with a budget in mind (one location), and I would play the third lead. But what was I to do? I had a pregnant wife, no job, and a burning desire to make a movie. I also had an established director attached in a proven genre, and I had a great script. I had to get my hands on $500,000 to make this movie.

Thankfully, in that following month, I learned to raise money.

Sure, I’ve refined my fundraising techniques since then, but 90% of what I still use today came out of the situation I was in back in 2005.

I learned to take the bull by the horns. I needed $500,000, and no one was going to raise that money for me. I had a dream, and I desperately felt the need to make it a reality. And that’s what I did.

The Result

And now, over three years later, things have changed. I’ve now raised over $15 million for three feature films, a documentary, and an educational video. I live in a dream house in the hills of Studio City, California. People come to me for advice all the time, and I get scripts submitted to me daily. I have multiple projects in development, and get my phone calls returned from everyone except the really, really high ups or the rude people (whom I really don’t want to talk to anyway).

After The Attic, I raised over $2 million for The Alphabet Killer, a psychological thriller I wrote that was based on a true series of unsolved murders that took place in Rochester, New York (where we ended up shooting the film in early 2007). The film was directed by Rob Schmidt ( Wrong Turn), and stars Eliza Dushku, Tim Hutton, Cary Elwes, me!, Michael Ironside, and Bill Moseley.

After The Alphabet Killer, I, along with my producing partner at the time, raised over $5 million for Love N’ Dancing. This was a brand new dance film (written by me), which had a completely different story than AnySwing (which is still on a shelf, somewhere). Love N’ Dancing was shot in late 2007, directed by Rob Iscove (She’s All That). The film stars Amy Smart, me!, Billy Zane, Betty White, and Rachel Dratch.

I’m kind of an anomaly. I’m an expert at film financing who only wants to utilize these skills for a specific purpose. I’ve been asked by several companies to come on board and be their finance guy, but I’ve turned down almost every offer. People who know me know that I have the ability to finance films, but I only wish to do so if there’s something in the project that excites me — namely, a good role to play! That’s where the anomaly part comes in: The actor in me has to be satisfied, or I’m not interested in putting my time and effort into a project and hitting up my money connections. But that should have no effect on you, the reader.

You might be strictly a producer, a producer-writer, a producer-director, a producer-writer-director-actor (yikes!), or any combination/permutation of those roles. At the end of the day, money is the only thing that will get your film made, whatever job you wish to take. You could use the techniques in this book to raise money and then become the caterer (though I’d take a hefty finder’s fee if I were you). It’s all about getting it done.

I’ve always believed in karma. I feel that ifyou put enough good karma out there, it will come back to you. One of the ways I did this was to keep myself available to anyone who wanted to talk to me with questions about the film business. I can sense the desperation of these young filmmakers (sometimes they’re not so young). I’ve been there, and I want to give all the help I can.

My wife and I have been married for five years, and we now have two kids, a daughter who’s three and a half, and son who just turned two. In addition to my work in the film business, for the past six years, I’ve been a motivational speaker for kids for A Vision in Motion, a speakers’ bureau in New Jersey. I tell the kids how to be positive and stay away from drugs, something I’ve done my whole life. Since my schedule is pretty crazy, I can only speak one week a semester, so for that week the bureau flies me out and packs as many speeches in as they can (I once did sixteen speeches in eleven days).

I work pretty much non-stop, and my wife, whose fulltime job is being a mom, works equally as hard, if not harder. So it was no wonder she would roll her eyes whenever I’d tell her I was going to the local diner to meet with another hopeful filmmaker who wanted some advice. (The joke is, most of the time the people made me pay for the lunch because they were broke!)

To have more time for my family and my work, I decided to put all of my techniques into a book. I’ve succeeded in raising money for films, and I know you want to do the same. I’m not holding anything back. I’m revealing all the techniques and tricks I use so that you, too, can make your dream a reality. It’s not easy to raise money for your film. But it can be done. Here’s how.