Conspiracy, originally uploaded by dhammza.

Remember that Big Scary Idea I mentioned a few weeks ago? Peter and I have been excited about it for awhile, but we turned a real corner yesterday. It sounds like Juan is convinced. And excited.

Its a risky, risky move. Turning away something that’s guaranteed in the hopes of forging our own path and possibly reaching far greater heights- or crashing and burning. But that kind of excites the hell out of us.

More news soon, once we’ve made a final decision.

And soon I can tell you about the adaptation I’m working on.

And in the not-too-distant future, expect a complete overhaul on our website. Chris and Juan are toiling away at it, day and night.

Jusup’Biceps Logo November 2007, originally uploaded by gass2002.

While we wait for these deals to finalize, Juan, Peter and I are on the job search. If anyone out there needs any film/video work done by some award-winning filmmakers, please give us a holler.

info [at] purewestmedia [dot] com

The formal pitch:

Pure West Films is a documentary film company located in NYC that makes industrial docs and just finished a feature-length documentary called Second Skin. Second Skin premiered opening night of SXSW to rave reviews, sold out shows, and tons of media coverage. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter called it, “fascinating” and three of the biggest film websites named it #1 movie of SXSW. Showtime, New Line, Netflix, and a number of distributors are currently making distribution offers, and we’re heading to Hot Docs, the biggest doc fest in the world, where we’ve already been listed in the Top 5 (out of 175) Must See Movies.

Before we made Second Skin, we were an industrial documentary company that won the 2005 Freddie Award for Best Consumer Health Video and the 2006 Silver Telly Award for the Charitable/Not-For-Profit Category.

The best example of our work is our Second Skin Trailer: http://www.secondskinfilm.com or ON YOUTUBE HERE

For our industrial movie reel: http://www.pwdocs.com/production.htm

Our movie site: www.secondskinfilm.com

Our reviews and press: www.mahalo.com/second_skin_film

Morning news, originally uploaded by rust&burn.

I apologize for all the silence lately. Things have just been going slow on the Second Skin front, and overwhelming on every other front.

But no longer!

Keep reading this week, as a number of developments are nearly ready to announce…

- Australia’s been giving our movie a LOT of attention lately- we’ve got some really awesome news coming up on that front. Pretty much the best news possible.

- Worldwide Distribution- we talk to our possible distributor today- details forthcoming.

- Adaptation- more on this soon, as well…

GTA IV latest news, originally uploaded by gamesweasel.

Has anyone else’s life been completely consumed by GTA IV? Stupid question, being that the game shattered all sales records, and its pretty much all you hear about on the news…

In any event, Juan & I need more Xbox Live accomplices, to truly harness the awesomeness of 16 Player Multiplayer. Let’s trade info — victor [at] purewestmedia.com

If you haven’t yet played GTA IV multiplayer, I can’t recommend it enough. The first time I played, five of us took over a prison and took an Alamo-esque stand against multitudes of police men, Swat vehicles and helicopters. I piled cars up to form a barricade, and right before we bit the dust, we all jumped into an ambulance and sped to the pier, where one of our guys was waiting with a tugboat, for an epic getaway.

Join us, and we shall rule the city together. Again - victor [at] purewestmedia.com

Woke up at 6am because my heaters are crap, and was delighted by the latest Zero Punctuation, in which he reviews YOU, the reader/watcher/gamer. Of course, Yahtzee’s ‘reviews’ are really just R rated diatribes in which he rants at approximately 1000 WPM. And they’re the best reviews since forever. I was about to forward this to all my gamer friends when I remembered, “Don’t I have some sort of blog?…”

If you aren’t a gamer, this will probably not be of interest. (If you’re a gamer and haven’t seen Zero Punctuation before, I’ve earned my karma for the day.) The post that will soon be above this one should be interesting to all- so I’ll get on that ASAP!

Second warning- lots of naughty words flying at you- beware, NSFW (w/out headphones)!

Ah, The Simpsons… ranked #1 on my list of All-Time Favorite Everything. If you’ve been to my place and seen my collection of every Simpsons action figure in existence, you know I ain’t fooling.

Anyways, what greater honor than to have an episode of the Simpsons about MMORPGs *and* an episode about documentary filmmaking during the same season? Though I understand that the Simpsons might not be this year’s cultural barometer, I still contend- maybe we tapped into the zeitgeist, somewhat?

Watch, enjoy, laugh and cry:

Above is the big screening we got at the Sommerville theater in Boston!

I was sitting at dinner with my Dad and my girlfriend (Taylor) last night (he’s come into NYC for my cousin’s wedding). We were talking politics, Obama vs. Clinton, the usual stuff. The conversation inevitably got on the topic of the Reverend, and I said, “Oh yeah he was on NPR right after the interview we did”.

Dad - When you were on the radio one of our friends called yelling that you were on NPR, and we were so excited! We couldn’t believe it!”

My girlfriend (Taylor) - You were on NPR?

Me - I guess I forgot to tell you guys.

Dad - (Laughs at me)

Me - I guess that was kind of important.

Yup. It would seems like I checked out of reality for awhile, and forgot to count all of our blessings having made this movie. We’re really lucky.

Peter and Victor have both been unbelievably patient with my gloomy self the past couple of weeks. Wherever I have gone I have been a sink of bad bad chi. I finally think I’ve turned a corner! I’m excited about a super top secret web project that should be coming out in beta within the next month or so. Victor is developing an amazing script! And Peter’s developing something nothing short of outstanding. So… promotions all around.

Here is my plug for our amazing NPR Interview on “Here and Now”! Then afterwards you can listen to the Reverend.
(more…)

World, originally uploaded by The Department.

We just received another email from our agent, and it seems like yet another foreign agent is eager to sell Second Skin to the world.

That seals it- we’re hot property overseas. While different distributors toil away in their secret lairs, on the intricacies of our deal, the foreign distributors have been clamoring over our movie. Huzzah!

We’ve been wined and dined, we’ve toured one great foreign distributor’s flashy office, we’ve had advances promised left and right… And now it’s up to us to decide…

And that’s a tricky thing, because each company has a very distinct plan for Second Skin. A few distributors want it to go in theaters, others guarantee far more money distributing primarily to TV/DVD, some want to bring it to Cannes, others to the big Amsterdam doc fest…

I’ll keep you guys updated. We have a lot of pondering to do. We’re just happy that we have the luxury of choice.

Let’s Limbo!, originally uploaded by Jan Tonnesen.

Its been a long time since my last post, o faithful readers, and I apologize. We’re navigating the uncharted waters between projects, and frankly, its a very weird place to be.

It’s the silences that are aggravating.

For example- the movie’s doing phenomenally. We pwned Hot Docs and Boston, made a bunch of ‘must see’ and ‘top five picks’ lists, got the usual torrential buzz, and got countless calls from local and worldwide distributors who are interested. In fact, there’s a great theatrical deal being drawn up right now, and we’re just waiting for it to get delivered to our agent.

Key word in that paragraph: waiting. Silence. Hunger for kinetic energy when there’s a universe of the potential kind.

But now’s not the time to be idle. We’ve had the chance to talk to some of the biggest names in doc filmmaking, especially in the past few weeks. They all tell the same story- the switch between the first and second project can be brutal. And you need to hustle like crazy. Especially if your first project is wildly successful- its like breaking up with the head cheerleader because you’re going to college… (something I have a lot of experience with… I, um, swear… okay, not really…)

Also, each of them has told us, you need to have at least three projects ready to pitch. We have our next project outlined and ready to pitch- I can modestly say that the idea is mindblowing, since it was Juan and Jamie’s, and not mine. I’ve been working on fleshing it out and scripting it, though, and I need to hurry. Which is tough, because an idea this spectacular needs to be transformed into a spectacular script.

On top of that, every industry person we’ve spoken to says that Hollywood’s looking for a virtual world movie, and we’re the ones that should be writing it.

And I’m most excited about an adaptation I might be making to a book that seems utterly brilliant. More details after I’ve read the book, which has been garnering rave reviews…

So, as you can see, it’s time for us to be schizophrenic. Those are my pet projects- as you can imagine, Juan’s got his own, as does Peter. I’ll let them post about them, so as not to steal their thunder. I will say that they’re pretty awesome and inspired- good to work with such amazing folk.

What’s most difficult in the midst of all of this, is needing to find a day job again. Our investors made this entire dream possible, but now that the movie’s done, so is the need for investors. Which means we’re trying to get some work doing projects for hire. I’ll write a whole post about it soon, but if you know anyone in need of some award-winning filmmakers for a corporate or other project, send them our way: info [at] purewestmedia.com

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I find myself on the threshold of summer. Sweet sunny days of schizophrenia. Hope you’re all well- I miss the lot of you.

Our two Boston screenings came and went in the blink of an eye. After a some nerve wracking last minute problems and fixes involving our screener tapes, opening night played to a packed house. The air conditioning was malfunctioning making it a sweaty experience, but the audience really seemed to like the film. Afterwards the question and answer session was fantastic. It tended towards a more general discussion of the games and their future, which is always fun. What was particularly fun for me was that I got to see a bunch old high school friends for the first time in years. I grew up two towns over so this was a home coming for me.

The next day we received a call at 3:10 from Adam Roffman to say we had been bumped from our 120 seat theater into the biggest screen of the fest with 800 seats. While being honored by the demand for our tickes, I was terribly nervous our sold out showing had suddenly become a three quarters empty screening. We ran over to ROFLcon to be interviewed by Attack of the Show. After promoting for a bit we went to the theater. Man was it big, but much to my relief so was the ticket buyers line. As I walked the line imploring people to see our film, I was pleased that the majority said they were planning to already. The screening had to be delayed ten minutes to let everyone who wanted to buy tickets get in. When I finally entered the theater I was pleasantly shocked it was three quarters full. The audience was full of laughter, thanks largely to the sizable ROFLcon contingent.

After the screening my parents held a reception with drinks and food at their house. As I was driving to the party my father’s car, which has never let me down since I learned to drive in it, stalled. I had the foresight to pull over and park while we were still rolling. When I tried to restart it, it stalled out with a whimper. Luckily I was directly across from my elementary school, which is very close to home. So I walked the last leg of the trip along the same route I took every day in my childhood. My parents friends and number of my cousins greeted me at the reception with hugs and praise. I was grateful for all the networking my parents did to bring their peers out. They were full of questions and seemed very pleased to learn about the gaming phenomenon sweeping across the world. My ten year old cousin was filled with questions about World of Warcraft, and he used the moment to try to convince his mother to let him play. It was a nice party, but I was starving by the end, as ever time I tried to take a bite someone had another question or compliment. All in all that is one of the best reasons to be hungry.