AFM 2000 - Day 2

AFM – Day 2
2/23/00

Excerpts from Pete's personal journal.

My mind tried to wake me up at about 3:30 a.m. PST, thinking I was back home in my own bed, ready to go to work. However, it didn't take long to convince my body that a couple of hours more sleep would do me good. I knew these next few days would be packed with events, so I took every opportunity to rest up.

I finally awoke around 9:00 a.m. and found the rest of the house still asleep. Along with Jenni and Jeff, Olga, Jenni's mother and Tracy, who worked with us on RWA, also lived in the house. I would soon learn that, in L.A., no one gets up very early and everyone stays up very late. So, I started to search the kitchen for some breakfast fixings, but didn't feel comfortable rifling through their stuff, so I plopped on the comfy couch and watched Sportscenter.

After a little while, Jeff awoke and we combined to make some delicious eggs and potatoes for breakfast. I then filled my time taking a tutorial on Final Cut Pro on their new Apple G3 machine. By 11:00 a.m. Jenni and I were out the door and heading to the AFM. Jeff would catch up with us later.


The first stop was the Directors Guild of America so Jenni could pay her dues and drop off some tickets for a Guild party. Inside I attempted to take some pics, but the Guard quickly informed me that "taking pics inside the DGA without approval was strictly verboten." The lobby of the DGA has three theaters (Video Theater, Theater One and Theater Two) and I was only able to snap a pic of the outside of the Video Theater. Even though the Guard was distracted by some workers setting up for a Showtime party in the lobby, I didn't want to get Jenni in trouble, so I put the camera away and we headed upstairs to accounting.

We left the DGA and headed, through town (not via highway) to Santa Monica, where the AFM was being held. On the way there, my EST stomach started to growl and Jenni pulled into a McDonalds so I could feed the beast. I was left with four dollars and some change. One more meal like that and I was headed to the ATM.

The sun finally broke through the clouds as we arrived at Loews Hotel about two blocks from the Santa Monica Pier. After some haggling with the valets, we were allowed to park the van ourselves and we headed into the hotel. When you enter the lobby you are accosted by people hawking industry rags (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, etc.) There are tables and tables of free industry publications that are yours for the taking. We made our way past the publication gauntlet and entered the lobby, where I felt like I had entered an X-Files convention. Everyone (distributors and buyers alike) was dressed in black, wearing long black trench coats and talking continuously on cell-phones. Mulder and Scully could have been standing right next to me and I wouldn't have noticed. Having been born without the hip gene, I was wearing color (green and tan), which made me look like a tourist. I didn't realize I should have dressed for a funeral. This is an important tip to would-be filmmakers. At ALL social events, wear black… you can't go wrong with black.

One of the first people we met was Mark Bruder from Bruder Releasing, Inc. (BRI), a domestic distributor. He had contacts with getting films into the Blockbuster chain, HBO, Lifetime, etc. We talked about the niche appeal this film has with handicapped viewers and he already knew the numbers, which was impressive. He took a copy of the film and told Jenni that they'd meet at the end of the market.

In the lobby we also hooked up with Dan Murphy, who is good friends with the Farley brothers (Something About Mary) and Jenni. He agreed to help us spread the RWA word and hand out postcards with RWAs poster on the front and a synopsis and screening times on the back. We would later learn that such overt advertising at the AFM is a faux paus. But, ignorance (no matter how temporary) is bliss, so we handed him a pack of cards and he headed into the thick lobby crowd while Jenni and I headed up to the eighth floor to meet with Showcase. In order to enter any of the floors where the distributors are located you have to have a badge with your picture (I think they cost around $400 each!) The blue badges mean you're a distributor (ours was from Showcase) and the green badges mean you're a buyer. Thankfully, I look enough like Jeff's little photo to get away with using his badge… now I'm not sure if Jeff should be offended by that or whether I should.

Every U.S. based international distributor takes one of the hotel rooms, sets up shop and the buyers strolls from one room to the other, watch videos, dvds, listen to pitches and determines what they think they can sell back in their territories. Jenni and I made our way up to 807, this weeks temporary home for Showcase, where we met with David Jackson, president of Showcase. He was a very nice, straightforward man. We talked about RWA and Adrenaline and tried to finalize a meeting with the foreign investors. He said he was having dinner with them that evening and would try to finalize a meeting with us then. He then went on to describe some of the humorous film investment schemes he had heard (diamonds for collateral, bad escrow deals, etc.) The funniest story was of a director who met with some middle-eastern "investors" who would only fund the film if they could put life insurance on the director. The director declined their offer and ran as fast as he could.

Jenni spent the rest of the afternoon up at Showcase while I strolled the halls checking out all of the distributors and films. It was amazing to see how many films were made that no one in the U.S. will probably ever see. It occurred to me that known to semi-known actors work a lot more than we realize. There were hundreds of films that fall into many of the standard formulas (action, blow 'em-up flicks and sci-fi alien-esque thrillers, sexy soft porn and horror/satanic themed films) that the average U.S. film fan will never see.

Distributors ranked from the ultra small (offering only one movie full of no-names, which were probably friends and local actors) to more "legitimate" distributors, like New Line and Miramax. And some celebrities came to push their films as well. There were a lot of actors that fit into that "oh, I know them from something somewhere but have no clue what their name is" category, a few that you knew well, but still didn't know their names (like the black guy who played assistant DA in the early years of Law and Order and the main hunk on the new Baywatch Hawaii). Then there were the ones you knew like Gene Simmons of KISS (pushing Detroit Rock City) and Jean Claude Van Damme (pushing a tender love story between a man and his injured puppy – yeah right, he was there pushing some action flick with a numeral at the end).

Other sights of interest were the plethora of silicon enhanced mammories, the hosts of calogen filled lips and the sad sight of the aging Hollywood insiders who try so desperately to look 20 and are failing miserably. The last group was truly sad and made me glad that most of the people in Florida let gravity take its course and look the better for it.

That night we drove home, slightly frustrated that we weren't able to nail down a meeting with the foreign investors, and finished the evening by eating some delicious beef stroganoff prepared so expertly by Jeff and Olga.

Remaining Cash: $4.87