Forums

Hi Friends!

OK, most of you probably know that I am a motion picture producer with many movie projects waiting to be born. If you’ve seen my short film DRIFTERS, you have seen how my two greatest passions, music and movies, were married together in a poignant narrative. What you MAY not know is that the character of the vagrant, which I play, is based on another character I created in two (so far) motion pictures named Dobro. he appears in my science fiction adventure BOTTLENECKERS, about a teenage girl who takes bottleneck slide guitar lessons from a local homeless man only to find herself entangled in an interdimensional crime war of a sort,  and again in DOBRO: LONG WAY FROM PARADISE, the direct follow-up to BOTTLENECKERS, which is more action and less sci fi and follows DOBRO, the itinerant blind bluesman who protects the citizens of a town from a megalomaniac and dispenses his own brand of razor-sharp justice. I plan for each film to include a cigar box guitar-oriented soundtrack as well. In fact my song “Bottlenecker” is a main theme song for each film…sort of Dobro’s theme song, I guess.

Above: Albert Emmerson from DRIFTERS

Above: Dobro...."Justice in Blind and plays a mean guitar!"

As both of these projects feature the cigar box guitar very prominently and can each be made independently on low budgets, I came up with a great idea. Since I don’t want to make movies the “Hollywood way” and go begging bankers for money, why not give the moviegoing community a chance to invest? Being a guerrilla filmmaker at heart, I bristle against the Hollywood establishment and prefer to make my films my own way. Maybe, I thought, the community at large, and the cigar box guitar community specifically, might jump at the opportunity to invest in some of my films.

And that’s what I’d like to explore with you. A movie’s finances can come from anywhere and from as many sources as is necessary. I realize the economy has some afraid to invest. But I also know that great movies are always in demand. And a truly great independent film can be extremely lucrative. Think of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or OPEN WATERS several years ago. Even STARS WARS, in many ways, and in particular THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI, because George Lucas used his own money to make them, are technically independent films. Robert Rodriguez’s SPY KIDS SERIES, EL MARIACHI—an indie film can be very lucrative indeed, even though such success cannot be guaranteed. But with enough people dividing shares the investment, while not inconsequential, could be relatively minimized. For example,  on a $1000.00 project, is it easier for two people to invest $500.00 each or for four people to invest $250.00 each? And the example continues as you break down the number. You see what I’m getting at.

SO, what do you say? Anyone out there in investing in a movie? If I get some interest from the people here, I can give you further details as to how this might work, more about the scripts and the movie projects themselves and my vision for them, and for the serious would-be investors a look at the scripts themselves. And this would be an investment!

If you've seen DRIFTERS, you've seen what I'm capable of with NO money. Imagine if I had more! Hit me back here, all with a spark of genuine and active interest. I’ll be looking forward to whatever response I get before proceeding further.

- Kevin

Dobro preprod poster.jpg