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...Your Own Damn Movie!
Sell Your Own Damn Movie!
Foreword by Stan Lee! This is the 3rd volume in Mr. Kaufman's hilarious, how-to series for hard-working self-starters and hard-laughing, cheeky filmmakers. "Sell Your Own Damn Movie!" covers everything you need to do to get your finished film seen by festival-goers, movie-goers, DVD-buyers and web-goers around the world. You will be lead through a primer on the history of film distribution to a discussion of the many ways you can get your film out there, either through a reputable distributor or all on your own. From the realities of distribution, to utilizing the internet to self-distribution, Mr. Kaufman tells you in his habitually lucid and off-the-wall way. Inserts include interviews and pointers from veteran distribution pros as well as directors and producers who share their own front-line stories. Mr. Kaufman recounts his own raucous stories of marketing pleasures and nightmares from 35 years of movie-making experience, creating a uniquely useful and entertaining read. Or, in Lloyd's inimitable words. The most asked question at my worldwide popular, legendary, renowned master class is, "How do I get my no-budget, zombie giraffe flick distributed? Well, have no fear, because the 3rd volume in Uncle Lloydie's how-to series of go-to guides for filmmakers reveals the secrets, methods and tricks (short of prostituting yourself and selling bodily organs) to getting your film distributed. With Troma, our legendary 35-year-old independent studio, Michael Herz and I have developed a low cost, high-impact method for low-budget film distribution, which has lead to a high-profile brand name and a catalog of over 800 titles! Now you can learn to get you movie out there, too. I will be your busty tour guide, sharing with you my hard-earned cinematic distribution know-how! -LEARN! How I achieved box office success with my fowl chicken zombie masterpiece Poultrygeist, and everyone's favorite super-human hero from New Jersey, the Toxic Avenger, for practically no money! -SMELL! The sewer that is mainstream distribution as I drag you through the muck, be-farting upon you the real scoop behind "indie and mainstream distribution deals. -MASTICATE! (No, not that kind of masticating) On the knowledge of DVD distribution as I es-chew the fat and get to the skinny of Do-It-Yourself DVD distribution. I will teach you the fundamentals of having a good website (like www.Troma.com) to boost your sales! -FEAST! On my golden brown chicken puns as I cleverly cluck your brain out with the irrefutable knowledge of how I sold over 10,000 units of the 3-disc limited-edition Poultrygeist DVD in a matter of months! YES! If you have any doubt that I will not be able turn your no-budget zombie giraffe opus into box-office gold, then put down this book proposal! No wait, pick it back up, pick it back up! This is a recession damnit, Troma needs all the money we can, er... I need to educate you filmmakers looking for distribution gold (brown)! After reading my book, any damn filmmaker will be able to "Sell Your Own Damn Movie! Featuring expert advice from those who have successfully sold their * David Cronenberg (Director of The Fly, Crash, A History of Violence )
* Oren Peli (Director/Producer of Paranormal Activity )
* Ted Hope (Producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, In the Bedroom, Happiness )
* Brad Kembel (Executive Vice President of International Distribution at Summit Films; Twilight )
* James Gunn (Writer/Director of Super, Dawn of the Dead, Slither )
* Jonathan Wolf (Executive Vice President, Independent Film and Television Alliance and Managing Director, American Film Market)
... and many more who have sold their own damn movies!
* Oren Peli (Director/Producer of Paranormal Activity )
* Ted Hope (Producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, In the Bedroom, Happiness )
* Brad Kembel (Executive Vice President of International Distribution at Summit Films; Twilight )
* James Gunn (Writer/Director of Super, Dawn of the Dead, Slither )
* Jonathan Wolf (Executive Vice President, Independent Film and Television Alliance and Managing Director, American Film Market)
... and many more who have sold their own damn movies!
280 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2011
79 people want to read
About the author
Lloyd Kaufman
58 books44 followersLloyd Kaufman is a popular American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves as chairman of the Independent Film & Television Alliance.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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July 11, 2011I sped-read this book in three days, partly because it was fast and funny, partly because I used an amazon gift cart to buy it and want to put it back up for sale right away. You wouldn't think a book with chapter titles such as "Foreign Agents, and Other Things Up My Ass" would be insightful, but for the most part it is, though altogether it's a mixed bag of Lloyd being funny, useless boring industry crap and some interesting trivium. It really could have used a copy editor, but I guess that's part of the charm.
After devoting maybe 90 pages to various rants and anecdotes, Kaufman goes into his old spiel about copyright law- by now he is preaching to the converted. Of interest is an interview with a woman who directed a movie called "Sita Sings the Blues" and partakes in "copyleft," meaning her product is free for anybody to do with as they want. Lloyd then spends some time explaining why piracy is good and how Thomas Jefferson initially designed copyright to only last 14 years before Mickey Mouse came along and fucked everything up for good.
A bulk of this book is then set aside for interviews with an eclectic mix of film people (Jonas Mekas, The producer of Twilight, the Paranormal Activity guy). Surprising to some, Lloyd is an excellent interviewer who asks all the right questions, and whatever his stance on copyright law and mega-conglomerate corporations he remains unbiased in these interviews and lets the diverse approaches and selling philosophies speak for themselves. These interviews can get pretty dry, though, and deal with concepts and marketing and legal issues way over my head. They are geared toward a much more refined and in-the-know audience who seriously believes they can make money out of making shitty films, which is not something I believe the average joe or Troma reader will be able do.
Ultimately, Lloyd doesn't offer much hope for you Selling Your Own Damn Movie. Other than suggesting you try doing it yourself, at conventions and snotty film festivals and whatnot, there really isn't much of a snowtit's chance in heck of not getting ripped off or simply ignored by tight-assed evil imbeciles. There is a lot of talk about having an "internet presence," (though whether or not this leads to making money is up in the air) as well as some obvious though funny chapters on bad marketing and the importance of having a good tagline and poster, and maybe a title that's at the beginning of the alphabet so people will see it first. He ends with an essay urging for net neutrality that is as impassioned as it is depressing.
I love how Lloyd Kaufman has made himself a sort of Ralph Nader of independent cinema, I am a big fan and wish him the best. This book is laugh out loud funny at times, and as is common with every Lloyd Kaufman book I've read, finds hilarious use of the footnote. But this book will not tell you how to sell your own damn movie, unless you have a lot of money to put into the project, which I don't think any of us have (films are a bad investment, period). He mentions numerously the fact that Troma's most recent feature, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead isn't making money, and if Troma isn't making money, the outlook for the rest of us is pretty bleak. Beause of this, I wish he spent more time talking about how to show and distribute your movie, had sacrificed a few Holocaust jokes and gone into the nuts and bolts of that more. There was too much talk about filmmaking as a product rather than an enjoyable art form created to be shared, but I also think Lloyd must've been taking the "scared straight" approach in warning nubile young filmmakers what forces are against them.
At any rater, I was entertained, and I learned some new things too! At the very least this book rekindled my hatred for Hollywood all over again, and made me very afraid of the state of the media world. It was also refreshing to read something that seems "hot off the presses" and relevant to the contemporary world. So thanks for that, Uncle Lloyd!
Some other stuff I gleened:
-People will buy merchandise to support you instead of just giving away money because giving away money may seem pathetic or awkward to them. It is also a good way of promoting your work.
-Give DVDs for house parties and see if house partiers can send any donations back.
-Hold leaflets in front of people's faces and say "check it out!" 3 times.
-Put a crapload of posters up at one spot instead of being choosy about it and putting only one up at a couple of spots.
-Lloyd hates Birdemic, which I guess was the Room/Snakes on a Plane of a couple years ago because he has a problem with promoting bad art under the guise of "it's so bad it's funny."
-Tromadance is a nice ideal, although I seem to remember I sent in a lovingly hand-made DVD package of the Grateful Undead one year and they snubbed us and starfucked Frank Henenlotter instead.
-Lloyd loves Matchgame too and advices you to have short people in your movie because they're funny.
-The director of Incest Death Squad sugests becoming a LLC.
-Assholes in Hollywood massacred A Star Is Born and destroyed all the footage they deleted so the movie is now indecipherable.
-Even David Cronenberg has trouble selling movies!
After devoting maybe 90 pages to various rants and anecdotes, Kaufman goes into his old spiel about copyright law- by now he is preaching to the converted. Of interest is an interview with a woman who directed a movie called "Sita Sings the Blues" and partakes in "copyleft," meaning her product is free for anybody to do with as they want. Lloyd then spends some time explaining why piracy is good and how Thomas Jefferson initially designed copyright to only last 14 years before Mickey Mouse came along and fucked everything up for good.
A bulk of this book is then set aside for interviews with an eclectic mix of film people (Jonas Mekas, The producer of Twilight, the Paranormal Activity guy). Surprising to some, Lloyd is an excellent interviewer who asks all the right questions, and whatever his stance on copyright law and mega-conglomerate corporations he remains unbiased in these interviews and lets the diverse approaches and selling philosophies speak for themselves. These interviews can get pretty dry, though, and deal with concepts and marketing and legal issues way over my head. They are geared toward a much more refined and in-the-know audience who seriously believes they can make money out of making shitty films, which is not something I believe the average joe or Troma reader will be able do.
Ultimately, Lloyd doesn't offer much hope for you Selling Your Own Damn Movie. Other than suggesting you try doing it yourself, at conventions and snotty film festivals and whatnot, there really isn't much of a snowtit's chance in heck of not getting ripped off or simply ignored by tight-assed evil imbeciles. There is a lot of talk about having an "internet presence," (though whether or not this leads to making money is up in the air) as well as some obvious though funny chapters on bad marketing and the importance of having a good tagline and poster, and maybe a title that's at the beginning of the alphabet so people will see it first. He ends with an essay urging for net neutrality that is as impassioned as it is depressing.
I love how Lloyd Kaufman has made himself a sort of Ralph Nader of independent cinema, I am a big fan and wish him the best. This book is laugh out loud funny at times, and as is common with every Lloyd Kaufman book I've read, finds hilarious use of the footnote. But this book will not tell you how to sell your own damn movie, unless you have a lot of money to put into the project, which I don't think any of us have (films are a bad investment, period). He mentions numerously the fact that Troma's most recent feature, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead isn't making money, and if Troma isn't making money, the outlook for the rest of us is pretty bleak. Beause of this, I wish he spent more time talking about how to show and distribute your movie, had sacrificed a few Holocaust jokes and gone into the nuts and bolts of that more. There was too much talk about filmmaking as a product rather than an enjoyable art form created to be shared, but I also think Lloyd must've been taking the "scared straight" approach in warning nubile young filmmakers what forces are against them.
At any rater, I was entertained, and I learned some new things too! At the very least this book rekindled my hatred for Hollywood all over again, and made me very afraid of the state of the media world. It was also refreshing to read something that seems "hot off the presses" and relevant to the contemporary world. So thanks for that, Uncle Lloyd!
Some other stuff I gleened:
-People will buy merchandise to support you instead of just giving away money because giving away money may seem pathetic or awkward to them. It is also a good way of promoting your work.
-Give DVDs for house parties and see if house partiers can send any donations back.
-Hold leaflets in front of people's faces and say "check it out!" 3 times.
-Put a crapload of posters up at one spot instead of being choosy about it and putting only one up at a couple of spots.
-Lloyd hates Birdemic, which I guess was the Room/Snakes on a Plane of a couple years ago because he has a problem with promoting bad art under the guise of "it's so bad it's funny."
-Tromadance is a nice ideal, although I seem to remember I sent in a lovingly hand-made DVD package of the Grateful Undead one year and they snubbed us and starfucked Frank Henenlotter instead.
-Lloyd loves Matchgame too and advices you to have short people in your movie because they're funny.
-The director of Incest Death Squad sugests becoming a LLC.
-Assholes in Hollywood massacred A Star Is Born and destroyed all the footage they deleted so the movie is now indecipherable.
-Even David Cronenberg has trouble selling movies!
March 29, 2015
Well, all these "Own Damn Movie" books are pretty much the same. You read one, you basically have read all 5 of them (I'm including "Everything I Know... From the Toxic Avenger").
Lloyd's humor caused me to laugh many times and there is a lot of valuable information within.
However, once you read one of these books, don't expect to get anything substantially different in any of the other books. They are all pretty much the same Damn Book.
Lloyd's humor caused me to laugh many times and there is a lot of valuable information within.
However, once you read one of these books, don't expect to get anything substantially different in any of the other books. They are all pretty much the same Damn Book.
December 18, 2019
Lloyd Kaufman takes the opportunity with his new book, $ell Your Own Damn Movie, to share the wisdom needed to navigate the ever-changing minefield of film distribution using stories of his own misadventures and by asking his fellow filmmakers what advice they can share from their experiences of overcoming the odds and getting an independent film released.
You can read ZigZag's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.
You can read ZigZag's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.
April 11, 2022
Great bòok! I learned a lot.
It's really hard to make money making movies but this book does a good job listing ways you might make money. Lloyd is really funny and you can see where James Gunn got his twitter jokes from lol. I got many good tips and renting this book was worth it.
It's really hard to make money making movies but this book does a good job listing ways you might make money. Lloyd is really funny and you can see where James Gunn got his twitter jokes from lol. I got many good tips and renting this book was worth it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews