MY FIRST TIME: Making An Indie Film And Selling It To Showtime (and 5 things we would've done differently)
Happy 1st Birthday to MOON MANOR - A Comedy About Death (Inspired By A True-ish Story)
The one year anniversary of the premiere of Moon Manor (my feature film co-writing and co-directing debut, a Harold and Maude inspired comedy about how to have a “good death” I created with Machete, my best friend since 8th grade) was February 25th, but I was buried in my new hometown’s most prolific blizzard in 50 years (10 feet of snow, hey!) to do much other than shovel aforementioned snow.
So here I am, 1000 hot cocoas and shovel blisters later, ready to reflect on this lovely Moon Manor milestone.
(Wait. I can’t sum up the blizzard with hot cocoas and blisters. That was some lazy writing deflection. The snow-apocolypse was in the New York Times and every other major news outlet, our town is still recovering, houses exploded (from snow-buried heater vents, that’s a thing, yikes) the National Guard was called in and dropped food from Blackhawk helicopters, we were snowed in for 11 days and nights (which was brief compared to many people on the mountain), two of our three grocery stores roofs collapsed from the snow, it was a wild, scary, surreal experience. Humans do things like truncate massive experiences into sound bites. Hot cocoa and blisters. What am I saying.)
So. Back to Moon Manor’s one year anniversary. Because life will never stop throwing snowballs at you, and it’s important to reflect on special occasions and not cortisol jump from one stressful experience to the next.
There are the obvious achievements to celebrate from the last year, like the screenplay being selected for the Academy’s of Arts and Science’s Core Collection, and our hilarious trip to the Oscar’s library with Jimmy (our 85 year-old star) to see the script. And the joy and sparkle of the premiere weekend, captured in this perfect little montage Machete cut together with film footage from our second night of screenings.
And the fact that we got distribution, and then a streaming deal, with Showtime no less. Because we’ve since learned that sometimes good movies, even those with movie stars in them, sometimes never get distributed. Which is bananas, but that is the industrial movie complex.
BTW — if you’re just reading about Moon Manor for the first time and need to get acquainted, or a year is a long time thus you need to get re-acquainted, here’s the official trailer, where you can watch the movie on Amazon and Showtime, and some of my favorite (I’m 100% biased) reviews:
'Moon Manor' is One of the Best of 2022 So Far - Subtle, warm, funny and emotional, Moon Manor is a complete joy to behold.
A Truly Beautiful Film - Moon Manor is an extremely entertaining movie about life, death, and going out on your own terms. It is a beautifully done, heartfelt film.
A Poignant, Bittersweet Ode To Life & Death - Chronicling a man's last day on earth, Moon Manor is delightful and heartbreaking at once, philosophizing what it means to live a meaningful life.
MOON MANOR — What’s it about?
Jimmy’s decided to throw himself a fabulous FUNeral before his intentional death. He curates everything about his last day on Earth - the obituary writer there for his first "pre-dead interview," his witty death doula, estranged brother, salt-of-the earth caretaker, various FUNeral guests and a visit from a cosmic being with messages only Jimmy can receive - teaching them that the art of living just may be the art of dying.
You can also buy the Blu-ray on Kino Lorber, which is crazycool because Kino Lorber is the preeminent art house cinema distributor, representing the work of artists like Jean-Luc Godard and Charlie Chaplin. To be in company with such tony peers means of course our Blu-ray extras had to be extra dorky:
PRODUCT EXTRAS:
Director's cut of the LOONARTICS infomercial, Jimmy's fictional moon real estate business.
Rare footage of Jimmy as a cruise ship director in the 1980's!
But there’s something even more vital at hand in this one-year-later-reflection — the project’s real “sacred assignment” (a phrase from our event with the International End of Life Doula Association — also a great place for resources if you’re seeking end-of-life support).
And that “sacred assignment” might best be explained with this revelation I had during one of our press events of the last year, a conversation with legendary end-of-life elder Mary Lane.
I scribbled down the notes of what I said after, to remember for myself, because 5 years into the process of making the movie, I felt like it was me finally realizing why I wanted to tell this story in the first place:
In the beginning, making the movie was shrouded in “this is the movie we can make because we have my house as the location, and Jimmy as the actor, so what story can you tell that takes place in one location with an 80 year-old character?” So it was technical. More about the production elements.
Now I have the hindsight to see that actually, I needed to have my own reckoning with death. At the time we wrote the script, my dad was really sick, he needed a liver transplant, and my grandmother was at the end of her life, and I’d never even come close to processing my mom‘s death.
So speaking for myself, and I know Machete has her own motivations and lived experiences she brought to the table, I wanted to tell the story of Moon Manor because I desperately needed to talk about grief and dying. It was happening all around me, and I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions.
I see now my soul was calling to enact death in a safe place, day in and day out, for 23 days of shooting. But playing make-believe, where everyone is still alive at the end, everyone still goes home at the end of the day. And the person “dying” has autonomy, free will and even joy.
Everyone who loves the dying person (Jimmy’s character) gets to have their last goodbye, gets to say that perfect thing they’d want to say. The room where the dying happens is soothing and beautiful. It’s not a cold hospital room filled with medical devices. It’s what I didn’t experience watching people I love at the end of their life. I needed to take the control back. To pretend I could. I felt jerked around by life, and this was an elaborate way to soothe myself.
So it took this long into the making of the movie to really understand why I wanted to dedicate so much of my energy, time and resources in the first place. Perspective, time and distance, is the key to understanding the self.
And if you’re reluctant to see the movie because, you know, DEATH, do not be deterred. The movie is lighthearted and funny and weird. The world is hungry for quirky stories on both sides of the comedy-drama mask. Looking at you, Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All At Once.
So how did the actual premiere weekend feel last year? Bonkers. Three nights of screenings, of sold-out crowds and sizzling Q-and-As. And on the final night, we wore our high-school prom dresses.
And on the Monday after such a high-flying weekend of creative recognition, I woke up to a flat tire and spent the afternoon getting it fixed. And then the tire place accidentally charged my card 4 times, overdrawing my account. Which was Life wanting to humble me. And remind me that the grind stops for no newly minted fancy writer-director.
But really this last year is about this: how the movie is affecting people who’ve watched it. I have a whole folder of screenshots like this on my phone, that I send to Jimmy, and then send to him again, because he doesn’t always remember he’s read it before, or maybe he just wants to keep receiving the love. I’m good with it either way:
These reactions are the antidote to the perils of indie filmmaking, in which we could probably now give a masterclass on deliverables, distribution and marketing don’t and definitely don’ts. But I’d rather think about the following instead. And of course, what it’s meant to Jimmy:
Some additional highlights from the last year are all about the community we’ve formed around the film. Those doing brave and important work in the end-of-life space, shining a light in the shadows most of us spend our lives trying to avoid.
If you can’t wrap your mind around how death can be funny, take a listen to this episode we recorded with Chelsea London Lloyd from the Dying of Laughter podcast.
If you’re curious how Machete and I managed to come out of the grueling process of making an indie with our friendship still intact, here’s an interview we did with Steve Bramucci of Uproxx, including us breaking down how we approached the structure and tone of Moon Manor in a more European way:
Finally, if you want brass-tacks advice on making a movie from scratch (and that might be why you read through this whole thing in the first place), the following essay we wrote for ScreenCraft after they awarded us their film fund (hilarious reaction video here) will hopefully point you in the right direction (full essay down below).
Happy one year premiere anniversary, Moon Manor!!
5 THINGS WE WISH WE KNEW WHEN WE STARTED MAKING OUR INDIE FILM 'MOON MANOR'
(Originally published on the ScreenCraft blog, August 17, 2021)
Hello ScreenCraft readers! We are Erin and Machete, a.k.a. the female filmmaking duo "KnifeRock." You may remember us from last year when we received the Spring 2020 ScreenCraft Film Fund! We’re childhood friends who are in the final stages of getting our first feature film Moon Manor ready for our distributor (hooray!), and we wanted to share some insights from the journey.
"WE DIDN’T GO TO FILM SCHOOL OR HAVE A BILLIONAIRE SECOND COUSIN WHO WANTED TO FUND OUR FILM. WE LEARNED EVERYTHING BY DOING IT."
Our movie is called Moon Manor, and it's inspired by one of our oldest friends (literally, he's now 84), James “Jimmy” Carrozo, who also happens to be our leading man! We co-wrote, co-directed, co-produced the film, and Machete edited. Rather than make the usual coming-of-age story, we wanted to make a coming-of-death story, thus the story follows Jimmy on his last day alive as he throws himself a FUNeral before his intentional death. But also, it's a comedy! To borrow a line from Ram Dass, the movie aims to explore this question: "What if the art of living is actually the art of dying?" Watch our trailer that premiered on Deadline here!
We learned a lot as first time filmmakers, like A LOT, and thus we wanted to share the top five things we wish we knew prior to making our first feature film. We've taken Moon Manor from a nugget of an idea to a script, casting, fundraising, production, editing, post during a global pandemic, and now we have a distribution deal and are crowdfunding to pay for deliverables. This process is about learning and failing upwards, and if you hit these same walls on your filmmaking journey, know you're in good company.
RAISE THE MONEY YOU’LL NEED TO GET ALL THE WAY THROUGH POST
Once we’d raised enough to get through filming, we were so excited to shoot that we just went for it not knowing how we’d pay for the rest of post production through to deliverables. This is not an uncommon practice for indie films, but it has definitely caused some headaches (to our producer Bay Dariz - you were right!).
We’d hoped having the movie “in the can” would ensure we’d be able to easily raise the rest of the budget. "How much more appealing a finished film will be to investors," we thought. It turned out to merely create more stress in an already stressful process, having to fundraise while also producing pickups, getting through the edit, and finding a sales agent and distributor!
We learned people really love to be a part of making a film. We thought doing most of the heavy lifting ourselves would make it easier for others to come on board later in the process, but it actually made it harder for people to get excited about finishing the journey when they hadn’t been with us since the beginning. Don’t underestimate how much people love showing up to help make the cake, not necessarily just to eat it!
JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN EDIT, DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD
We thought one of us being able to edit would be a blessing and would save us some major costs, which it did. However, it cost more in time (and sanity)! And you know what they say about time. That stuff costs money!
So, even if you CAN edit, it doesn't mean you SHOULD. Also, having an outside editor allows you to step away and see the project you’re creating more objectively, and also have time for other things -- other work, a life, anything else really. Seeing a feature all the way to the end is already a lot of responsibility, it doesn’t ALL need to be your responsibility.
WORK WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT MAKING A MOVIE WILL CHANGE YOU
We knew going in that our relationship would evolve through making a movie together, but we didn’t realize to what degree. We grew stronger in our professional relationship, yet sometimes our personal relationship got put on the back burner.
Make sure you’re ready for the evolution and take time to focus on both personal and professional relationships. (This is specifically for people who collaborate as friends). We have learned that we change as much as we stay the same and have deep respect for each other. Making a movie takes a toll, so to have someone to do this with is a really beautiful thing, but it takes balance.
GET THEE A POST SUPERVISOR
Or, at least be ready to head even more than you think you will, because once the excitement of production dies down, there’s still a LOT (like, a ton) to do before your movie is fully in the can.
We thought we’d easily be able to continue heading everything through post production until we arrived at the magical land called Distribution -- we didn't realize how exhausted we’d be. Tack on the freelance lifestyle, which means earning money by doing various jobs yet still having to spend so much time working on one project, then being confronted with new really sexy things like errors and omissions insurance, and filing taxes as a joint partnership. Add all that up and it equals that awesome word BURNOUT.
While we’re on the subject, two other jobs we thought we could get by without were script supervisor and production designer. That means we both did versions of both those jobs while also directing and producing. ("Was that candle in the last shot? Is our continuity going to be off because we don’t have time to scroll back and check?") Don’t get us wrong, we had an amazing professional team and everyone graciously wore multiple hats, but don’t underestimate the reason why there are oh-so-many jobs listed when those movie credits scroll.
MAKE A MOVIE BECAUSE YOU LOVE THE PROCESS AND STORY MORE THAN ANYTHING
This is less something we wish we’d known before and more something we got right (yay) and wish to impart. We wrote Moon Manor in total around 11 months (writing the whole script plus rewrites), were on set shooting for 23 days, and have spent over 4 years writing emails since this whole journey began. “Professional email writer” isn’t really what we had in mind when we started down the writing/directing road, but that’s what it feels like most days.
The only thing that’s kept the dream alive is how passionately we want to tell Jimmy’s story and help change the conversation around death and end-of-life. Maybe the story you’re passionate about involves zombies from space searching for cantaloupes, your movie doesn't have to have a personal connection or involve a social issue. Just make sure it’s a story you can stay interested in for years, that can keep you going when your family and friends say, “Wow you’re still working on that?” Or if a pandemic hits and the future of festivals, theaters and the film industry at large is a giant question mark, it helps if you still feel like your story needs to be in the world and you’ll stop at nothing to reach the finish line.
In conclusion, if we can make a movie, you can too. We didn’t go to film school or have a billionaire second cousin who wanted to fund our film. We learned everything by doing it.
If there’s a final thought to leave you with, it’s to not be shy about asking your community for support. Apply for every program your project is a good fit for. When we won the 2020 ScreenCraft Film Fund (after applying three times!) it was a game changer, not just financially, but for a morale boost when we needed it most. If you want to join the Moon Manor fam, find us on Instagram. We wish you all the luck on your filmmaking journey!!