cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And I might Get to Be a Human Being Again Yesterday I had a really good conversation with Seth, my TV development guy in LA. Seth and I have worked together on a few different TV show concepts and a few one-offs. None of them have been made yet, but one of those is still in the hopper and could happen. He's been working in the LA TV production world for 15 years or so and has sold a lot of shows and knows what he's talking about. I asked Seth to watch my movie. And his response was, "holy shit, that's one powerful piece of content!" I fucking hate hearing writing and video referred to as 'content,' but from Seth I took that as a big compliment. His opinion is that this is going to be a really big deal and will get bought by one of the bigger players. HBO, A&E, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Nat Geo, Discovery, etc. etc. Seth says that with the media coverage we're getting, it is pretty much inevitable. The verdict of everyone who has watched this film is that we have made the definitive movie about what happened in Ch@rlottesville on August the 12th. Steve, my friend who pt up the money to make it, had asked to be in charge of the negotiations to sell it. And he has had enough success in other areas of business that I was happy to let him take point on that. But now I'm realizing that this isn't going to work. Steve has no fucking idea what he is doing in this industry. He seriously said to me last week that we might have to accept $50k for this film. From a TV network. First of all, that would not happen because I would not agree to it, and he contractually cannot sign a deal on his own. My piece of the back-end is 10% and the fuck I spent 3 months of my life busting my ass on this for only $5k. Fuck you. But more significantly, Seth pulled me back to reality by pointing out that the budget for any random shitty piece of non-fiction content on any of these networks is usually between $500k - $1M per hour of programming. That's for whatever disposable rip-off of Pawn Stars or anything. This is the baseline, lowest price that they pay for 60 minutes of something to present on television about 10 times before their broadcast rights expire. This movie is 90 minutes and has way bigger demand and a much larger potential audience than any random shitty reality show that they would spend half a million bucks an hour on. At a minimum, this is worth $750k. And more realistically, given the interest in the subject and the fact that this is the first doc about it and will likely be the gold standard, we're looking at probably $2M as a starting point, on up to maybe $8M. Seth is 100% positive about this. And he has sold shows and docs to HBO, Nat Geo, A&E and everyone else. Now I have a few thoughts about that. First, I have to do a really uncomfortable thing and push Steve out of the negotiation position that he is currently in. The contract for making this doc says that he gets X percentage of the proceeds of the film until the investment has paid off, and then Y percentage afterwards. The contract does not give him the copyright to the film and it does not grant him the right to decide what deals are accepted or not. He doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and I can't let him be in charge of selling this. It might hurt the friendship, but I have to pull rank and tell him to step back. I'll talk to the networks and let an entertainment lawyer do the final negotiation. My second thought about that is that maybe I'm finally going to be able to restart my life. Maybe be a real human being again. Exist as someone who matters and has value beyond just my published work. Because so long as I don't have a proper place to live, I have been completely worthless. I produce stuff professionally that I'm very proud of, but that is on another plane. Individually, I have felt dead. Every day, I want someone to fucking kill me. If I don't have a real home, I have no value. I've just been treading water for the last few years. I'm a dead thing that only has some slight utility for what I wrote for Sm1thsonian Magazine and The N3w York Times. As far as what the world really values, I am a piece of trash. I've felt like I should have died four years ago. Someone should have killed me. And I've been forced to exist since then as a sub-human writing this shit that millions of people read and it's supposed to be important, but if it really was then I'd have a real home and health insurance. Someone should have pointed a gun at my head four years ago and blown my fucking brains out. But I've been forced to exist since then, against my will most of the time. I genuinely think that I would be better off if I'd been killed after Helenah left. There's no point in living while suffering -- I don't believe in any god per se. I wish I hadn't existed for the last four years. I would have accepted not existing ever again in exchange for not having had to exist for the last four years. Now, if this whole thing with the movie goes down like Seth thinks it will, it'll sell for somewhere between $2M and $5M dollars. I get 10% of that. With between $200k and $500k, I think I could start a new life. $200k would be an awkward number because it isn't quite enough to buy a house with cash around here. I want to buy a durable life. Maybe I could buy a piece of land with $50k, that I can do more with later. And buy a decent car and rent a nice place to live and be there for a few years while I'm burning through that money. $500k would be closer to something that I could build a life with. For $300k here, I can buy a nice house with cash. And I'd buy an electric car like a Volt or something for $10k and put a solar system on the house so I don't generally have to pay for gas or electricity or worry about those bills. For $500k, I could own a place to live with no rent ever again, and have plenty of cash left over and my only bills would be car and homeowners insurance, property taxes, and phone and internet. With a $500k payday, I could make a life that only requires $25k or so of income a year to live happily. It's just fucking exhausting. I've gone from one big-deal Hollywood TV project to the next. The moment where Steve inadvertently sent me the message that he needs to be gone in the negotiation for this thing was when he started talking about the multi-part option. Really early in this project. I started saying that I would like this film to be one of a three part series. First, this one. Then a 90 minute film about how Ch@rlottesville got to the point of the rally. All of the politics, flashpoints, scandals, etc. Then a 90 minute part three that shows what the fallout was after the rally and where it went. I'd love to make the other two parts of that series. I covered the stories closely during the months before 8/12. I've also covered everything since very closely. So, um, what exactly does Steve have to offer? Not a fucking thing. Steve offered up $25k to make the first film. And I had 3 other ways to pay for that, and probably should have taken one of them up on their offer, because that would have been less annoying. He financed the film, and he's entitled to profit from that. To the hugely exploitive sum of 80% of revenues after his investment has been made back. Dude has nothing to complain about. I'm making a tiny fraction of the money from the movie that I, you know, actually fucking made. But now he thinks he's going to negotiate a deal for two more films in this series. With him taking 80% from that. For what, exactly? What the fuck does he think that he has to add to this production? He doesn't know any sources, he he isn't a journalist, he won't be doing any research, he can't work a camera or run sound or do any editing or color correction. No. Steve does not get to be involved in any additional films or documentary projects. He has nothing to add to this. No skills that are even remotely of use in this world. And that is going to be a very awkward conversation when I tell him that he doesn't get to scoop up a fixed percentage of my earnings just for being there.
12:20 a.m. - 2017-11-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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