THE LONG AND BINDING ROAD
A Tale of Pushing Your Movie After It "Expires"

I started reading the ‘Power of Focus’ – another excellent book, but ironically
I can’t focus because of the following topic on my mind. I was hanging out
with a friend the other day. He told me about a friend of his who is a
filmmaker and wanted us to meet. He had told her that I’m a filmmaker with a
movie called “Trade Offs” on Netflix and Blockbuster—I corrected him and stated
that it was only on Netflix. He said he had walked into a Blockbuster and it
was sitting on the shelf. I was blown away! I had really wanted to get it on
the shelf at Blockbuster as it’s the most accessible form of distribution.
Netflix only has a couple of million members in comparision to BB. Then I
immediately thought about my intentions last year of pushing the film – long
after it was made and even sold to the distributor.

I worked with publicist Irene Paigah (http://www.paigah.com) and let know her
that my best move would be to have “Trade Offs” on Netflix and Blockbuster –
which would also help the countless number of people who worked on the movie.
Even though it was my first film as an actor and my acting would probably win
me a Raspberry Award, I want to be able to refer to it. When you can tell a
Hollywood executive or agent that you have a movie sitting on the shelf of a
rental house, you’re way more likely to get calls returned.

Irene wrote and made follow-up calls to both of the rental companies as well as
the distributor, since the movie was already sold to them. But it seemed like
Irene and I were getting a somewhat blasé response from both the rental
companies. I had been emailing Netflix & BB periodically requesting it as well
from a customer service direction. Then we exhausted the possibilities for the
time being so we left it. A few months later I was browsing Netflix and there
it was. It was finally on there. And now it’s on Blockbuster online and some
brick and mortar stores. I’m not sure what other forces were at work from other
people on the film, but for me it didn’t matter that we started the production
of the movie was four years ago and hit the festival circuit three years ago
and it came out on DVD two years ago at all the Indian grocery stores. Try
telling an exec that they can go pick up the movie at an Indian grocery store.
I just wanted to keep pushing it and pushing it.

I learned this lesson of pushing your old movies even when you’re working on
your current ones from my friend Babar – who was privileged enough to work with
the late Pat Morita just before he passed away. As actors, we can rack up
quite a bit of movies a year, but as writer/director/producers we usually get
one, if that, a year. And if it’s a feature, it’s a few years for just one.

What I do when I submit short films to festivals is do a tiny edit and put the
completion date current. I do this because most film festivals have a two year
limit on the production date – that restriction is nothing more than a vanity
issue as they want the most recent film regardless of quality. I also started
taking dates off of the festival acceptance wreaths and putting in the film
name in its place (see my film page – www.anup.net). A movie is not milk, it
doesn’t expire.

Happy Filmmaking,
Anup

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