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August 2, 2010

Turning Things Down

The other week, I got a call from an agent wondering if I'd be interested in directing a feature in Los Angeles this fall. He had a script, and a producer, and a lump sum sitting in a bank account waiting to be spent on it. All that was required was a director to head up the casting process and then make the film, and he was wondering if I would be interested in filling that position. He liked those Boycrazy shorts I did with Alexi and thought I'd be a good fit.

The problem - and it was a problem, even though I might have once qualified it as a problem well worth having - was that the budget totaled out around sixty thousand dollars. That, and it wasn't a script I had written. I'm not so precious about auteurism that I refuse to consider helming anything I haven't penned myself, but the writer in this instance just wasn't speaking my language. Commensurately, this film wouldn't be a passion project but a paycheck, and the sort of paycheck that comes from a 60k budget is not worth the endurance test implicit in that same number.

Granted, that number is still roughly five times what it cost to make St. Nick. And it's only a little bit lower than the budget I just put together for what I hope is my next feature effort. And I'm also currently so broke that I shouldn't turn my nose up at any sort of creative opportunity that might have some petty cash I can steal away with. So I spent a lot of time worrying about it, wondering if I was being delusional, sitting astride some high horse made of straw. The conclusion I came to, which I knew all along, is that at at this point in the game - the point at which I'm suddenly being offered a project - it's unfair both to myself and to that project to jump on it if I'm not feeling it. I'll make money on things I don't care one bit about, until the things I do care about start paying off. And I'll be working on those things regardless, which is what I mean when I say that filmmaking is a lifestyle and not a career.

Posted by David Lowery at August 2, 2010 9:03 PM