We have all done it. We have all, at least once in our lives, imagined that we are the hero in our own movie. Perhaps it was while strutting down a city block like Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero with your own theme song in your head or perhaps it was skipping across the sidewalk in front of your childhood home, wishing adventures awaited you down a yellow brick road as they did for Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. Whatever your movie, you’re the hero in it, even if it’s only in your head. Therefore, if we’re all the hero of our movie, then we must also have an audience, and we must always do what is most entertaining and intriguing to our audience. This is the premise of writer/director Brad Gottfred’s first feature film, The Movie Hero (2003).
“I have always believed to a certain degree that we’re all the stars of our own movie and I think the world would be a better place if we all realized that we were the hero and the audience is watching us waiting for us to be the hero,” explained Gottfred in an interview at the Downtown Media Art Center’s Café after his film screened to a enthusiastic audience in the 80 seat digital cinema located upstairs.
Soft spoken, dressed in a pair of jeans and a beige wool blazer, Gottfred appeared after the 7:30 PM screening of The Movie Hero on December 30th and discussed his first feature film experiences with the DMAC audience.
Born and raised in a suburb of Chicago, twenty-nine year old Gottfred wanted to make movies since the age of 14. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont where a professor told him that one of the best ways to become a director is to write a feature screenplay and direct it. After college, Gottfred moved to Los Angeles where he has been grinding out a career in film for the last seven years. One of his first jobs was writing script coverage for Hollywood executives.
“As soon as I got to LA I started reading scripts,” Gottfred remembered, “and 99% of the stuff that came in was crap and 99% of what came in was not going to get made. And eventually that got depressing because some other person like me was rejecting my script on the other end. And I realized that all of the scripts I rejected were some other writer’s dreams and hopes.”
Eventually, Gottfred got out of writing script coverage and focused on his own film career. He immersed himself into screenwriting and had about 7 scripts written before he penned The Movie Hero. Initially, he tried the studio route and pitched his story to executives with no success. Many of them thought Gottfred’s ideas were original, but they just didn’t know how to market them.
Gottfred didn’t have big stars and he didn’t write a gross-out comedy or an edgy dark comedy. What he had was a sweet, quirky romantic comedy and although some Hollywood executives liked it, they didn’t know how to sell it.
“One of the things I discovered is that if I had to rely on these people to make my movie, it’ll never happen,” said Gottfred.
Frustrated and determined, in the fall of 2001, Gottfred set out to make his feature film. He shot for a total of 18 days in and around several recognizable Hollywood locations including Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Since he knew nothing about filmmaking, Gottfred made a few rookie mistakes.
“We immediately went over schedule. I take full responsibility as an inexperienced director. The first DP was a handful as far as attitude. [I had to] fire the DP after 10 days and it threw the whole course of the film off base.”
Even though he had hit a few speed bumps along the way, Gottfred got his movie in the can and spend another year on post production. Finally, in 2003, he submitted it to Sundance.
In Gottfred’s opinion in order to quickly sell an independent film to a reputable and established film distributor, “You have to start with Sundance [and] you need three things: huge stars (and that won’t always do it), a perfect film (and that won’t always do it), and major connections. We didn’t have any of those 3 things.” The Movie Hero was not admitted into Sundance.
What Gottfred did have was a unique concept with some recognizable stars which helped his film get into several other film festivals including the Austin Film Festival (Winner: Best Competition Feature), Cinequest Film Festival (Winner: Best Actor), and York International Film Festival (Winner: Best Feature).
The Movie Hero stars Jeremy Sisto (Six Feet Under, Suicide Kings) who plays Blake, a fanatical movie buff convinced that he is the “hero” of his own movie. However, there are no cameras, no crew, and no cast – just Blake’s belief that everyone has an audience, even if most people cannot or will not see it.
Blake constantly and reflexively speaks directly to “Us” and draws complete attention to the fact that he is in a movie of his own imagination, that we’re the audience, and that there are typical movie conventions like “the love interest” and “the bad guy” that we must recognize.
Dina Meyer (Saw, Starship Troopers) plays Blake’s’ love interest Elizabeth, a therapist determined to help Blake get over his cinematic delusions. However, tables are turned when Blake seems to become her therapist, forcing her to question her relationship with her arrogant novel writing husband known as the “doomed fiancé” played by Carlos Jacott (“Ramon, The Pool Guy” from Seinfeld).
Completely convinced that he is the hero of his own film (and his life), Blake sets out to find a unique sidekick, but humorously ends up finding a token black man named Antoine, played by Brian White (Mr. 3000).
They set out to defeat a “suspicious character” played by Peter Stormare (Fargo, Constantine) who is stealing audiences from unsuspecting victims. Interestingly enough, Gottfred was originally Stormare’s assistant on such films as Armageddon and 8 MM. Attaching Stormare to The Movie Hero wasn’t difficult.
“Peter more or less…would have done it regardless just because he’s like family now,” Gottfred warmly recalled.
Gottfred’s casting agent Shannon Makhanian brought Sisto and Meyer to the table after the script gave them both a chance to play roles different from their previous work. Sisto has played many roles that are dark and brooding, similar to his work as Billy Chenowith on Six Feet Under.
“Jeremy actually auditioned for the role. I wasn’t in love with his audition but we got along so well and I think that’s a lot more important. Dina read the script and loved it. She had never played a romantic comedy type of character. She usually plays the mean girl or the tough girl so this was a chance for her to play a little softer and she liked that.”
The Movie Hero is far from a perfect film and Gottfred recognizes that. It’s an interesting concept, and worth a view, but it’s a little too long winded and it doesn’t deliver as many sincere laughs as it should. Unfortunately, its interesting premise becomes its downfall because there are only so many real laughs that can be had when the star of a movie keeps talking to the audience.
However, it’s a demonstration in first time film making and Brad Gottfred’s appearance at the Downtown Media Arts Center is an excellent example of what the folks at DMAC can offer the small, yet talented Film & Video industry in Orlando, Florida. Like many working and struggling in Orlando, Gottfred had a dream, passion, and determination to make his first feature. A conversation with him offered more insight into making a first feature, than some film courses do.
The information he shared about dealing with the Screen Actor’s Guild, distribution, and selling an idea was indispensable.
For example, he openly stated that if he could do it all over again, he would shoot with non-union actors, shoot in one location, and shoot a “horror movie with a lesbian scene.”
Gottfred added, “I would still write something soulful and creative and that I feel is necessary to put out into the world. I would never go against that.”
He has also found other creative ways to get his work financed and produced in Hollywood including turning his next script for his forthcoming film The Reapers into a comic book first.
“Studio films are either based on a book, or a comic book, or a remake, or a sequel. There’s almost no original scripts made anymore. One of the things I’m doing is turning one of my scripts into a comic book. Even if it doesn’t sell, if I can just show that to an executive, it immediately gives them that sense of cache.”
In 2003, Indiewire named The Movie Hero one of its top 20 films of 2003 without distribution. Now that it’s 2005, the movie still doesn’t have distribution not because offers haven’t been made, but because the offers made did not meet Gottfred’s expectations.
“We had an offer of $50,000 at one point for North American home video rights,” Gottfred explained, “and I turned it down for a variety of reasons. Would I take it today? Yeah, I would probably take it today. Would I be surprised in a year from now if we don’t have distribution?”
Gottfred humbly answered, “No.”
Brad Gottfred entered the film industry with a dream and came out with a movie. Even though the road was bumpy, and the movie may never get distributed, making a unique independent feature film is a success in and of itself. The Movie Hero now has a real audience and it’s not just in Gottfred’s imagination.