Referral Friday is part of an ongoing series inspired by John Jantsch's Make-a-Referral Week. For more about that, and loads more referrals for everything from cobblers to coaches to gee-tar teachers, start here. Pass it on, baby!
There's a way things work in Hollywood, and the way is this: when your movie opens and does well the first weekend, life is good. You get some momentum, and more support (in the form of dollars and oomph), and you get to make more movies.
This happened to a guy I know many years back, when I was a medium-aged thing and he was a young thing. He made a little short called Family Attraction about the last nuclear family on Earth. They were being kept in a zoo of sorts, and throngs of people would visit them in their "natural" habitat: a modest single-family ranch house with one glass wall in each room, for observation purposes. Poor, dead Chris Penn played the lead, Martin Short Sheen played the President (before he played the President) (and thanks for the catch, Deb!), and yours truly was cast as the Tour Guide (see above for proof and know that the sunny glow belies the motherfucking FREEZING temperatures we had on the day of the shoot).
Brian was supposed to be the Next Big Thing, but for a variety of reasons this didn't happen. Timing was bad, the wrong people made the right promises...whatever. The thing is, when it didn't happen, he didn't turn into a dick; he kept being Brian, a guy who loved movies and wanted to make movies and kept plugging away at making movies until it happened again.
My old friend, Brian Hecker, has a movie opening this weekend, April 3/4/5. It's called Bart Got a Room, and it looks pretty funny. It stars some kids I've never heard of, and two pretty cool, funny people I have: Cheryl Hines, a friend of a friend who also worked her fucking ass off to get where she has, and always stayed pretty sunny, despite how hard it was before things hit; and William H. Macy, a fantastic actor who was gracious enough to waste his prodigious talent on an audition for a radio spot I wrote, which I was unable to give them. I'd like to think that great people who have their brush with loser me finally reap some fantastic reward. I'd like Brian to reap a reward.
If you're thinking of going to see a nice, independent comedy this weekend, consider making it Bart Got a Room. If you're not, consider going to see Bart Got a Room. I never go out to the movies anymore, and I'm going.
Independent-ish movie making is as important to support as independent business. Right?
Right.
See you at the movies...
xxx
c