FILMMAKER'S DISCLAIMER: Matthew Harrison asserts that he is not a disgruntled filmmaker, but hopes that his comments help any filmmakers who consider themselves disgruntled.  

HARRISON: I started making movies when I was quite young here in New York City where I grew up. I made my first films on 14th Street, and they were all short films, dramas, like three or six minutes long. I went to a really good school, P.S. 41, where a lot of good people came out of, like Robert DeNiro. I was making films all the way through grade school, and my films kind of kept growing from there. I didn't go to film school. I went to an art school here in town called Cooper Union. Then I was part of really what was in the early eighties the New York underground film scene, and I was making films in that and they were getting bigger and more ambitious.  

In the late eighties, I started work on my first feature, Spare Me, which I got financed in '92. It was about an $80,000 budget, about half of which I raised through friends, and then during postproduction just scraping it together where we could. Some of it went on credit cards. That picture never got picked up, and it never got a video distribution. It did really well on the festival circuit. It didn't get into any A-list festivals, but it did really well on the B-list. We got some good awards in some solid B-list festivals. That's when I put together my second feature. After I did the first one and I realized I wasn't going to see any of the money back, and I didn't want to stop, I designed a script that I could make super low budget, Rhythm Thief. I had always been making films that way earlier. All of my short films were made with very small budgets. I made a couple of half-hour films for less than $1,000 each. I've always just been putting the emphasis on making films, on the writing, and casting out of the pool of really talented people in New York City. I wasn't pursuing the indie model of the day, trying to cast people out of Hollywood. I really wasn't interested in that. In Hollywood, it's very specific and it's a very different business. The emphasis for me was on the work and developing the kind of work that I do.  

So I got the second feature done, and then I won a Jury Prize (for Best Director) in Sundance '95. Sundance is a great thing, but the picture didn't get sold there. The interest that I had gotten from Rhythm Thief had already started before Sundance. A friend of a friend got a tape to Martin Scorsese, and he and Barbara De Fina saw the picture. The wheels were already turning on Kicked in the Head before Sundance even happened. I tell young filmmakers often, it ain't all about that make-or-break A-list festival deal, because the A-list festivals are really not that much use to a filmmaker unless all the players are in place beforehand, which means distribution, and the agencies. That's how they really put spin on a movie.  

VENT!: How did Film Crash come about?  

HARRISON: I founded Film Crash in 1988. At the time I was very active in the screening scene in this neighborhood, the Lower East Side and all over Manhattan. I met these three other filmmakers and I decided we'd all formalize it as Film Crash. A lot of people go to film school because it builds a fraternity of connections, so they can be in on the club. That wasn't my scene. I think that's all a load of bullshit, so I just hooked up with filmmakers whom I thought were really talented. I just kept looking until I found some other filmmakers that I thought were the "real thing." We didn't go to school together. One of the guys was Karl Nussbaum. He was from St. Louis, and he'd come to New York to go to NYU film school and left because he couldn't stand it. And the other is a guy named Scott Saunders who grew up in California and, same thing, he came to New York to go to NYU grad school and dropped out. And Chris Grimm, whom I had been working with for a long time, he was one of the founding members as well. Chris was part of the gang of ne'er-do-well filmmakers. He didn't go to film school either, but we'd been making films, cranking out movies all the time. So we were putting the emphasis on making films and exhibiting them. At that point, we weren't submitting films to festivals, or to any of the officially sanctioned screening spaces in New York City. All the stuff we were doing was alternative, and it was all shown in alternative spaces. That was our niche, what we were interested in. We were building our own audience and learning from them. In the beginning the show was very cheap to do, and then it started to break even for a while. We knew we couldn't make money doing it. For us, it was a proving grounds. Right now, there's about eight of us in Film Crash, and we had a big presence in Sundance this year. 

VENT!: So you don't regret not going to film school?  

HARRISON: No, really I don't. I think I was lucky enough to meet some good filmmakers who really influenced me, and I was lucky enough to have the parents that I have. For people who really want to make movies who might not be coming from an arts background, I think film school is fantastic, so I do recommend it. It depends on what people are looking for. After I got out of art school and was doing what I did here in New York City, some people suggested that I go to grad school for film, but I looked at it as really a step backward for me. There's different ways to learn.  

VENT!: How did you go about making your first feature, Spare Me?  

HARRISON: I think it's really important for people who are just starting out, who haven't perhaps worked with trained actors before, and who haven't worked with synchronized sound film, to try that out in a short film beforehand. You can try it out in video, too, but I think it's also smart to then try it on film, because it's quite different. I do recommend people at least put together even a five-minute short that's sync sound, working with actors, before making their first feature. I had done that already, experimented with that, and I had done some research about how to do it. But you just kind of dive in. Rick Schmidt wrote that good book, Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices. I recommend that people read that. We shot Rhythm Thief for $11,000 on 16mm. I took everything I learned from making Spare Me, where we spent more money, and applied it to Rhythm Thief. Each time you can do things in a more efficient way and use the money better.  

VENT!: After finishing Spare Me, how did you approach distributors and deal with film festivals?  

HARRISON: I didn't really know how to approach distributors. Looking back, I realize I did everything wrong, but you just kind of have to do it. We did the research, got all the names of all the distributors and looked at the companies that were distributing movies that we thought were similar, and we approached them and sent the film to them. They all said no, no, no.  

We also sent the film to all the A-list festivals, and we got good feedback from some of them, like Sundance. (A-list fests such as Cannes are major international competitive events governed by very strict entry and exhibition requirements; B-list fests are often privately run and have corporate sponsors; C-list fests are those put together by universities, film societies or counties.) Sundance was really curious to look at Rhythm Thief. I could almost tell they liked my first film enough that they wanted to show Rhythm Thief before they even saw it. Sundance is an interesting festival because a lot of it is about a relationship with the filmmaker. If they're interested in the filmmaker, they'll support the work, even if the film might be less than perfect, or might not be able to function in the marketplace. One of Robert Redford's key ideas is really supporting the filmmaker, so you'll see oftentimes they'll pick these films that there's no way they can perform in the marketplace, and they know it.  

You should really develop good relationships with film festival people and press people, because they're the ones who help you along with your career. Call up the people who run the festivals, the festival director. Tell him you just finished a movie, and you think it's good and you want to submit it, and that you haven't done the festivals before, that this is all new to you. Fax some info on the film to him, what it's about and so on. The next day, call him up again to see if he got it. Don't submit in anything cold. If you develop a good personal relationship with them beforehand, there's a better chance they'll remember you, and that yours will not be just another tape in a huge pile that each of them takes home with them every night. You don't want to be in that pile. Try to send them a print of your film, not a videotape. Tell them you don't have any cassettes made up. That way, they (the festival committee) will all have to get together and schedule a screening to watch your film, and they can't fast forward it, or pause it to answer the phone. 

VENT!: Did you send out video copies of your films to distributors?    

HARRISON: On Spare Me I sent it out on video, but on Rhythm Thief we made a policy not to do that. The distributors had to come to the screenings at festivals. We were in Berlin, in Toronto and in Sundance. Film Four, part of Channel 4 in London, purchased Rhythm Thief when we were in Berlin and they blew it up to 35mm. I struck a deal with them that we would own the 35mm negative when the whole process was finished, so I own it.  

VENT!: Did winning the award at Sundance help Rhythm Thief to be picked up?    

HARRISON: I don't know how it helped. I can't say, "because of that, that's where we got picked up," because we didn't get picked up there. Strand Releasing picked the film up like two months later. We were at some other festival. I think one of the guys from Strand was down at the New Orleans Festival where Rhythm Thief was screening. That was the moment where they just decided, we're gonna take this film. They were there when it won the award at Sundance and they liked it, but they didn't buy it then, because they knew Rhythm Thief is a risky theatrical film. Strand is one of the more imaginative small distribution companies, but they can't compete at the level of the bigger companies as a Miramax can. They don't have the ad dollars. The theatrical market is a high stakes game with heavy-duty players. It's big business, big money. 

VENT!: Did shooting Rhythm Thief in black & white hurt in selling the film?   

HARRISON: Shooting Rhythm Thief in black & white hurt us commercially, but I think it helped it to be much of a favorite with the critics. It couldn't get bought though. A lot of companies in Europe said, we can't even touch it. They heard it was great but they didn't even want to look at it because it was b&w. But so what? It was right for the movie. You can do work that'll please all the critics and the theatrical people are not interested, and then you can do another thing that the theatrical people really like and the critics are all shredding you because they know you're doing something for the theaters.  

VENT!: What do you do to cut costs making a film as low-budget as Rhythm Thief?   
  
HARRISON: Shooting in regular 16mm really helps. Don't try Super 16mm because that's just trouble. I tell people to just work towards that 16mm release print. Keep the shooting ratio down really low. There's a few ways to do that- rehearse with your actors beforehand, reduce your location work so it's a very simple plan, try to get all vehicles out of the picture so you're not driving from location to location. Keep the work day short so they only have to supply one meal to the crew. Nobody should get paid. That should be a course requisite for anybody who is hired. If they won't work for free then you don't want them on your crew, because then they're not there for the right reason. It's the script that sells people to work on the picture.  

Keep the crew really, really small. A lot of people seem to get interested in making movies because they see the photos of the director with the riding crop, standing up on a crane over tons of trailers yelling "Action!" and having all these people do what you want. They think they're not making a movie unless they do those things, but that's not what it's about. Keep it as intimate as possible. If  you can, shoot the whole movie handheld- it goes a lot faster, it's a lot cheaper, and you can keep the movie fluid, keep it moving. Too many first features I see are really static because they lock the camera down and they continue shooting until the film is like fucking stuck in mud.  

Don't worry about music. Don't even attempt dealing with those music industry people. They don't give a fuck about your film and they'll just fuck you. Just take all your favorite music from your favorite record albums or CDs and put it in the film. Don't worry about getting the rights. Just don't put the Rolling Stones in your movie or anything really high profile. Just find cool shit to put in and then you can play the festival circuit, which is probably all that's going to happen to your movie anyway. Make sure the film stays really true to your heart and don't worry about any of that stuff, but make sure you get some good insurance.  

VENT!: What do you think about using credit cards to finance a film?   

HARRISON: It's a bad idea because it fucks people up. There's a lot of excitement now around this whole concept of making a feature, get rich quick and it's all gonna blow up. For a lot of young people to rack up that credit card debt on this all-or- nothing chance, I think it's kind of unfair. This whole hype has generated that problem, and I think in many cases for young filmmakers who are starting out to have that much risk involved in their first project might destroy them and they'll never make another movie. The chances of you getting your movie picked up is a chance that's not even worth discussing. It's almost guaranteed you won't. That's why I don't recommend that young filmmakers go with credit cards. I think it's bad to have so much risk involved on that first feature. I did it, and I guess I wouldn't have done it any other way, so who am I to say, don't do as I did do? But from where I am, I would say, don't do that. If you can't figure out how to make the film on twenty grand, then don't do it.  

And you know what? I could have. If I really sat down and looked at that script of Spare Me, I'd have realized there was no way I could make this film for that cheap amount of money. We got to be in bowling alleys, that's expensive. We got to do all this traveling, that's expensive. I got too many characters in my script, that's expensive. I got some special effects scenes in it, that's too expensive. I could have cut all that shit out. Rhythm Thief was about one tenth of Spare Me and it was twice as good, and it was to a large extent because of that, because I wasn't running around and doing all this bullshit, "look ma, I'm making movies" stuff. How many times have I talked to young filmmakers who are like, "I'm gonna do my first script and I'm gonna be huge" and "I got this script and in the first scene the planet blows up, and in the second scene we got a squadron of F-16's comin' down, and then we got all these aliens they meet." They got thirty speaking parts and they're like, "I won't compromise my script."  

I started making Rhythm Thief about a year after I made Spare Me. I didn't use any credit cards on that one. And my family had had it- they were like, "that's it, we're not giving you no more money." So we scraped together $12,000. I put in about $5,000 that I should've been paying my credit cards off with, but didn't. I was working during that whole period. I was working my freelance jobs right up to the day we started prep on Kicked in the Head.  
 

VENT!: How did Martin Scorsese come to executive produce Kicked in the Head?  

HARRISON: He was in Las Vegas shooting Casino and he saw the tape of Rhythm Thief and really liked the film. He called me on the phone and said, "I'd like to meet you." I went into his office here in New York City and met him and his partner Barbara De Fina. I had the script for Kicked in the Head that I had been writing with Kevin Corrigan, and I had a couple of other scripts, but they were much more like Hollywood-style mainstream movies. Kevin and I figured that ours would be an interesting script to give to Marty first because it was unusual, and he really liked it. October Films had told me they were interested in making a movie with me, and I told them about Kicked in the Head. Then Barbara and Marty took it to October, and they (October) agreed to put up about $3.5 million to make it. At that point, October, Marty, Barbara, and me got together and started to make lists of casts that would work for them, and casts that Marty and Barbara thought were a good idea, and people who I liked, and where those three lists met is how we cast the film with James Woods, Linda Fiorentino, Michael Rapaport. Barbara De Fina and Martin Scorsese oversaw the production and had final say in things. They were very respectful of me creatively. There were some areas that they did crack the whip on me, but I always felt they were warranted. They have more experience than I do, so I think I was pretty damn lucky to have someone like Marty telling me what he thought about the casting or of the way we put the crew together. It was really great feedback.  

VENT!: How did October Films get interested in you?  

HARRISON: They had seen Spare Me and they liked that. When I made Rhythm Thief I didn't approach any production companies, because I knew I wasn't ready yet to make a film with a company. I had a lot of faith in Rhythm Thief, but I knew if I went to a company like October and they got involved, it would not be the movie that I got to make. I made Rhythm Thief very much the way I wanted to make it. It was a very particular style. 

VENT!: How does making a $11,000 film compare to making a $3.5 million film?   

HARRISON: There's a lot more pressure on a bigger budgeted film. In a lot of ways there's a lot less choice. It was fun working with name actors. That was one of the real boons of making the film because those guys bring a lot to it. You get to tap into Linda Fiorentino's and James Woods' entire careers worth of experience. 
  
VENT!: What was your experience with lawyers and agents?   

HARRISON: When Rhythm Thief happened, I signed with the William Morris Agency right after that. They came to me. You can't go to agents. There's no point. You sit really still in the woods, and if you sit still long enough a little birdie lands on you, that's how it is with agents. You can't make any moves towards them, or they run. 

I had a lawyer working with me on Spare Me and Rhythm Thief, and that was really useful. It's really good to have one. There are plenty of people out there who'll do it. You have to take your script to the lawyers early, before you get financing, to lawyers who are really interested in independent film like John Sloss. Take the script to them and say, "I'm getting ready to do this and I really need some help. I have zero money right now, and I wanted to talk to you early and let you know what I'm doing."  

The real power of a movie is in that moment when it's just a script, because then it's just an idea. It's like when your friend says to you, "I know this really cool person who's looking to date." That idea is much more powerful than if you meet the person. As soon as they see a foot of film, the magic's gone, and no matter what, they hate it. No matter how brilliant it is. When Lucas put his first rough cut together of Star Wars, everyone was like, "Sorry, George, you're in really bad shape." Spielberg was the only one who said it's going to be a hit.  

VENT!: How did the many harsh reviews for Kicked in the Head, like Janet Maslin's in the New York Times, affect you and the film? I know it disappeared from American theaters rather quickly.  

HARRISON: Yeah, unfortunately. But that's really October. I love Kicked in the Head. I'm real proud of it, and Marty really liked it. My real goal with the movie was to make a film with a multimillion dollar budget and working with name actors. I had never done that before. It would have been great if it had also succeeded at the boxoffice, but that's really not my concern. Making the film perform at the boxoffice is not my job, and I'm not the expert at that either. You're working with the bigger companies and they really have power. There have been some very successful movies that, as far as I can tell, are not even half the film that Kicked in the Head is. So it really doesn't have anything to do with how good or bad the film is. It really is how it's presented to the critics, who presents it to the critics, where on the food chain the company is that presents it to the critics. There's a lot of different forces involved. October Films is now a strong contender, but they're still kind of the underdog. They're still fighting. There is a great tendency, just like in any other industry, of the people who are on top to try to keep the people on the bottom down. 

Should Janet Maslin be reviewing a film like Kicked in the Head? Films like Titanic and Soul Food, that's really her area. She's great at that. All the people who are going to be looking for things like Soul Food or Titanic are also going to be looking at Janet Maslin's reviews. The people who really would get something out of Kicked in the Head are not Janet Maslin's audience. Janet Maslin didn't know who I was. She never saw any of my work before. So why was she reviewing that picture?  

You notice who most of the film critics are? They're usually these early twenty-year-old guys who are film nerds, who are never going to make a film their whole lives, and they're pissed off about that and criticizing my work. No matter how many people tell you your film sucks, it doesn't matter because you made a film and they didn't, so fuck them. 

VENT!: What advice do you have for those filmmakers about to embark on making their first film, or those who have made their first film and are trying to get it out there?   

HARRISON: There's two ways you can go. You can either make the film you really want to make, in which case you have to start the project assuming that the film will make zero income and design your whole plan accordingly because the film will not make any money and will not get sold. Or, the second route you can take, is to make the film that you know the industry is going to want, which means casting somebody out of a hot TV show in a nice, light, TV-like movie, and then you can probably sell it and make a shitload of dough. Those are two distinctly different ways of making a movie. If you make the film you really want to make, it's going to be just about that, about making a really good feature for a very small amount of money, doing the festival circuit and not having any income from the movie. I make Matthew Harrison pictures. That's what I can do. I bring what I can from myself, from my experience, and from what I know is good. I now got a few people like Martin Scorsese whose opinions I really respect telling me that what I do is good. Janet Maslin can say I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't give a flying fuck what she thinks. 

VENT!: What are you doing next?   

HARRISON: I have a modern-day western that I'm doing right now, and I have a comedy that I've been re-writing lately. Project 61 and Incompetent Casanova are pet projects of mine that I've been working on for some time. I always have about half a dozen of these going. They're both features, owned 100% by me and are in postproduction, slowly because they don't have budgets. 

I think the next picture I make is going to be more of a genre picture, because Kicked in the Head is really not a genre movie at all... A genre is just a different shaped, different colored piece of paper that you start writing on, working within a framework of a film noir, or a western, or a war film, whatever. You can work in ratings too. You can make an R-rated, or a PG or G rated movie, whichever one you think you'll have a better chance of selling.  

Kicked in the Head is pretty much a special kind of film. I'd say Kicked in the Head really was a Matthew Harrison film, and the thing was, they didn't know who Matthew Harrison was yet. Every film director has to have a film early in their career that gets slammed, so I got that out of the way for the moment. What the big distribution companies know is, when they look at a film and see that it failed or succeeded at the boxoffice, they're thinking, that filmmaker, that film just did not have the benefit of a great distribution company. So the old adage, you're only as good as your last picture, that's really not true. It has nothing to do with the creative team. Most of the movie business has to do with distribution, which is a corporate business. The decisions are being made by businessmen. It's not because one product is better or worse than another. For kids who want to make movies, I'd say you just got to keep the faith. It's a longer, harder road than anyone really tells you.