Watch Watching A Movie 52391k

I came up with the idea for WATCHING A MOVIE and everyone I knew told me not to make it. "That sounds pretty bad, Evan," was the common refrain. Others told me "it should be a short." Nobody really understood that in order for the film to work (a movie about a guy making a movie about himself watching a movie), it had to be a feature. You had to feel this guy's agony as he tries to work with people that didn't share his vision. You had to watch him as he watches a screen for 10 minutes at a time without any dialogue. I was inspired by Andy Warhol's EMPIRE movie and Jim McBride's DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY. The script was written, the actors were cast and the shoot took place over two weekends at my parents' house. Everything went like clockwork and when the film was wrapped, I had about two hours' worth of footage that needed minimal editing. As I sat in the editing suite in Pasadena, CA, the person who I was paying to let me use his system walked in at one point, watched one scene and muttered "boring as hell." When all was said and done, this film had cost me (with shooting costs, editing and tape dubs) $350. Somehow, I made that money back quicker than I had on any one of my films. People called saying that they had seen WATCHING A MOVIE available in video stores in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. I had Tapeworm (and now Pro-Active Entertainment) distributing the film, so who knows where else it ended up. Facets Multimedia in Chicago had ordered and continues to order copies... 5ai1u