Let's be honest, the backlash against Zach Braff's new crowdsourced movie project is directed towards capitalism more than Braff himself.
Last month, the former Scrubs star took the bold step of using Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing site that entrepreneurs and artists use to try to fund projects by offering a range of incentives in exchange for money, to fund a new movie, Wish I Was Here – a "sequel in tone" to the 2004 indie hit Garden State. Braff is offering everything from a "production diary", for $10, all the way up to the opportunity to be a cast member for $10,000.
In the past the site has been used by artists with cult followings, who would otherwise be unlikely to be funded via the usual bureaucratic-capitalist routes. The appearance of a successful Hollywood actor using Kickstarter may have made some justifiably annoyed, especially when Braff smashed his $2m target in three days of setting up his page.
Braff makes it fairly clear in his videos that funding the film is a vanity project. He cites his desire for complete artistic control as justification for asking fans to help him out (and of course, he defensively states that he is also putting in an "ass-ton" of his own money, to bring the actual budget to about $6m). While it is certainly a romantic notion (and God forbid any British actor attempt to do something like this), one wonders if the fans, who were going to pay to see and buy the final film anyway, are going to get their money's worth. Relatively speaking, they are. While critics may snort at forking out $5,000 just to sit at some actor's table at a movie premiere, the fact is that this offer sold out almost immediately, and will probably end up being one of the most exciting nights of their lives for those five backers .
If we want to talk the ethics of this, donors are not being "ripped off" because the surplus-value of what Braff is offering – the profit from the backers' rewards – is visibly going towards the film rather than just to line someone's pockets, which is a lot more ethical than most profit ventures. It's funny how reasonably priced these novelties seem when nobody is profiteering; a large, autographed Braff print averages about $75 on Amazon. It comes with T-shirts, a soundtrack, a choice of print, an invite to a screening, a script and more, for only $50 extra on Kickstarter. The issue is that Braff refrains from offering giveaways of the actual film when it comes out so that, presumably, these fans will be paying for the film twice.
This is where some detractors are annoyed: if the film becomes a commercial success, its backers will see none of the money, though they helped get the project off the ground. But this is not how Kickstarter has ever worked, nor the movie industry, and thus seems to be more a criticism of capitalism than Braff himself. He isn't pretending to be a Marxist, but the transparency of the process inevitably opens up for this critique. It's arguably disingenuous not to mention who will enjoy the profits of the final release, as presumably, Braff won't only ensure the "integrity" of his movie, he'll get the greatest cut. Yet where else do consumers make this their business?
A more pertinent question is what this could mean for the traditional users of Kickstarter if this become a trend. The idea that Hollywood film proposals will lure away donors from projects that actually depend upon crowdsourcing sites doesn't really hold up. Kickstarter donors tend to listen to the entrepreneurs in whom they're already interested, rather than just cruise the homepage looking for worthy causes.
This isn't the demise of indie success stories. Braff himself points out that the day that he released his project, Kickstarter had its highest traffic day ever, and that this seems to have at least given a small boost to other projects. Whether you agree with him or not, Braff has brought the site a lot of positive attention, and his film probably won't hurt the more traditional and needy projects that made Kickstarter what it is.