Bankroll. Tom Malloy

my guts. I would only assume this because I found out later he did want to take over the project and direct. So I’m sure there’s bad blood. But, like the late Bernie Brillstein said, “You’re nobody in this town until someone wants you dead.”

      The Attic moved forward with Aimee and Isen joined by a producer named Russ Terlecki, who was able to bring $90,000 or so from various sources (on top of the initial $250,000 that I had raised).

      I’m not going to go into too much detail about how the film turned out, because this book focuses on the funding of films, not the execution or the distribution, but I will bring up a few relevant points.

      I learned two amazing lessons while shooting The Attic. The first is perhaps one of the most important rules I know: The absolute best time to raise money for a feature film is when you are in production. I’ll go more into this in Chapter 13: The Dangerous Approach. But just know now that the lights, camera, and action of a movie set make investors open their pockets.

      We needed about $550,000 to complete The Attic, and, thankfully, I raised the gap (around $200,000) as we were shooting. I had pitched and sold a great guy and his dad, who owned an upstate New York Internet company that was taking off. (They recently sold the site for $40 million, I believe.) They invested $75,000, and found someone else to match their funds. So now we had around $490,000. When we were done shooting and were in post, I went back to the Internet guys and they graciously gave us another $25,000. Because we had a film shooting, they invested.

      Second lesson I learned was a little more intricate. There’s a great book I recommend for any film producer called From Reel to Deal by Dov S-S Simens. When people express an interest in becoming film producers, I tell them to begin there. Dov started many careers, including Quentin Tarantino’s. He breaks down a section where he answers the question, How do you make a $200 million film? His response is, Make a $20 million film that is successful. How do you make a $20 million film? Make a $2 million film that is successful. How do you make a $2 million film? Make a $200,000 film that is successful, and so on. You get the picture?

      One of the few points I disagree with in Simens’ book is his use of the phrase “that is successful.” I have found that if you want to make a $2 million film, you only need to have made a $200,000 film. It doesn’t have to have been successful. You just have to have done it.

      Director Mary Lambert giving me last-minute tips on the set of The Attic.

      Let me explain. Suppose you were starting a dance club. Wouldn’t you rather have the pro designing the space be someone who had designed clubs in the past? Maybe he designed the XYZ club and that club failed. Is it this one person’s fault? Probably not. Other factors play important roles in the club’s success. The key is that you’ve hired someone who has experience doing the job you need accomplished.

      Think about how that relates to film: I realized, after we had finished The Attic, that I had a little cachet. I had completed a film for $550,000. I had already lined up another project called The Alphabet Killer, and this time I needed over $2 million. Not only had The Attic not made money at that point, we hadn’t even screened it for a distributor. But, the movie was done, and that’s when I learned a second great lesson: You start making movies, and it’s way easier to get more movies going.

       The Alphabet Killer

      In 2005, my wife Emily and I were living in New Jersey, just after the birth of our daughter, Ella. I told Emily that I wanted to write another scary movie, but this time make it more of a true crime/psychological thriller. Right away, she remembered a story about an unsolved serial killer case that took place in her hometown of Rochester, New York. Apparently, in the early 1970s, a man killed three young girls, aged ten through twelve, who each had the same first and last initial, then buried them in the town corresponding to that initial. For instance, the first victim, Carmen Colon was buried in Churchville. The case remained unsolved, and the culprit was referred to as the Double Initial Killer.

      “The Double Initial Killer” sounded like a weak title for a movie. Also, the real killings involved three letters, not two (the first name, the last name, and the town name).

      So I called the project The Alphabet Killer. (Funny enough, when there was a break on the case a year ago, CNN referred to it as The Alphabet Killer, which was a name I created!) I also decided to set the script in the present day, to avoid dealing with the budget additions that come with shooting a film set in the 1970s.

      I also decided to stay away from the crimes’ victims. I didn’t want to focus on young girls being murdered, so I made the main focus of the story an internal battle going on inside lead investigator Megan Paige (eventually played by Eliza Dushku). I chose schizophrenia because many schizophrenics have a lot of trouble with letters and numbers.

      I did a ton of research. It turns out, luckily, that the mother of my sister-in-law’s then-boyfriend was a police investigator and had worked on the case, which gave me my first big “in.” I also read a lot about schizophrenia and spoke with several psychologists.

      The scope of the film was a lot bigger than The Attic. It was a really gripping crime thriller that took place throughout all of Rochester, so I knew it could not be done as cheaply. I went back to my production team on The Attic and brought them on board. We calculated that the film would have to be shot for at least $2 million.

      Great. I had my number. Now I had to go raise it.

      The main HNI involved with the picture was a friend from my network who had given $75,000 to The Attic. He was a big fan of true crime stories, and had ties with the local and state police of Rochester. He was a big figure in the Rochester community as well, and became a very valuable resource during filming.

      But he needed to be convinced to write a $2 million check, because the $75,000 he had invested in The Attic had not come back to him, and there’s a big difference between that figure and $2 million! In fact, not even a fraction of his initial outlay had come back. Nothing.

      I was able to get some initial funding from my Internet HNI to the tune of $25,000, which allowed us to start some development of the film (see Chapter 12: The Attachment Approach). In the end, however, continual trips up to Rochester pitching this guy on the viability of the project, and lots of nights drinking together, closed the deal.

      I attached director Rob Schmidt, whose last film, Wrong Turn, had made $51 million in theaters and DVD sales and rentals. How did I do this? Well, I was looking for an editor to recut The Attic, and I emailed Rob through his website. I wanted to talk to his Wrong Turn editor. We actually had offered Rob the directing job on The Attic, but the project wasn’t right for him at the time. Rob gave me the name of the editor and let me know that he had great admiration for my Attic script. I emailed him back right away, saying, “Well, I’ve got another one, if you’re interested!” He was, and, within forty-eight hours of my mailing him the screenplay for The Alphabet Killer, he was attached.

      During a trip up to Rochester, I learned one of the most valuable tricks for convincing an investor to invest. This could truly be considered “underhanded,” but I swear that I did it with pure innocence. My mother-in-law worked for NBC News in Rochester, and I asked her to see if she could get a story for us on the making of the film (though it was a way off). I figured it would inspire local interest and perhaps drum up some money.

      My mother-in-law set up the interview, and I invited the HNI to join me. Well, the local Rochester news did a fantastic story that featured me as the writer-producer and my HNI (whose name is Greg) as the executive producer. I really thought innocently that it would just serve to get him excited about the film and make a stir in the community.

      Unexpectedly, I got a call from Greg about a week later. “Everyone is blowing up my phone! They keep asking me when the movie is going to be shot!” The strangest thing happened… he practically had to go ahead with the film or risk losing face!