There's been no shortage of outrage over Zach Braff's Kickstarter campaign for Wish I Was Here, the first film since his 2004 directorial debut Garden State. But the project's most damning — if not the most hilarious — indictment actually came last year, when New York wrote about the actor-director's newly gut-renovated downtown Manhattan loft. "I had this daydream of a cozy barn in upstate New York, but floating above the city," Braff told the magazine. "Manhattan is so crazy and mayhem-y, and I wanted something peaceful." The eleventh-floor, 2,600-square-foot spread features a 360-degree view spanning the East River to New Jersey, a $6,800 cast iron tub, a $2,895 "Papa Bear" chair, snapshots of his British model girlfriend taken with a $2,300 portrait camera, and "a piano and other instruments on hand for guests to tinker with." As Marvel Comics: The Untold Story author Sean Howe so succinctly put it on Facebook: "Somebody should give this guy money."
Brett Easton Ellis isn't exactly hurting, either. According to another, just-as-absurd New York piece, the bestselling author and literature's decades-reigning enfant terrible lives in a Los Angeles condo that's "like being in a bubble suspended above the city," drives a black BMW 528i, dines regularly at the Chateau Marmont, and "drinks prodigiously, usually a top-shelf and very clean tequila..." And yet Ellis's announcement of turning to Kickstarter for a musical version of his 1991 novel American Psycho should be as hailed as Braff's crowd-funding was derided.
Here, the descriptions for both projects as appearing on their Kickstarter pages:
The story of Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, who at 35 is still trying to find his identity; a purpose for his life.
[T]he shocking, funny and unsettling portrait of Patrick Bateman, a 26-year-old Manhattan investment banker with a designer lifestyle and a twisted mind.
Don't compare the quality of the plots. That'd be unfair. American Psycho is, after all, one of the great novels — one of the great works of art — of the late 20th century. "The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep and Dostoyevskian themes," Norman Mailer wrote of the book in a review for Vanity Fair. "[Ellis] is showing older authors where the hands have come to on the clock." Pit Braff's storyline against, say, the Kickstarter description for The Canyons, the Linsday Lohan debacle for which Ellis wrote the screenplay — [F]ive twenty-something's quest for power, love, sex and success in 2012 Hollywood. — and it sounds pretty damn compelling. Instead, look at the two descriptions, and then at their fundraising goals. A modest-sounding coming-of-age film, and a full-blown musical premiering in London and running for more than a month. Which would you guess costs $2 million, and which $150,000? You'd guess wrong.
Most of the criticism leveled at Braff has been of the "He's filthy rich and stealing away Kickstarter money from aspiring filmmakers who really need it" variety. But his greater sin, and one that's been little acknowledged, is requiring the same amount of money allocated to disaster relief for April's Texas fertilizer plant explosion to make what sounds like a pretty simple movie. One of the most visually astounding films of the last decade, Shane Carruth's 2004 time-travel mind-scrambler Primer, cost just $7,000. This year's Independent Spirit Award Winner for Best First Feature, Safety Not Guaranteed, was made for $750,000. That film starred Mark Duplass, who along with his brother Jay has made a career out of doing movies on the cheap.
Seemingly to blame for Braff's exorbitant budget is his desire to shoot on film. As he writes in his Kickstarter pitch:
We were able to shoot Super 35 millimeter film on GS [Garden State]. In today's digital age, it's become harder and harder, and more expensive, to shoot film. If the budget permitted, I would shoot "Wish I Was Here" on film as well. There are several amazing digital systems we'd use if we couldn't afford film, but as a camera geek who went to film school, I'm sad film is going away. Only the biggest directors these days get a chance to shoot it.
Sure, shooting on Super 35 is pricey — around $600 for a scant 11 minutes of film. But there are plenty of small directors who, through ingenuity, have found a way to stick with celluloid. Academy Award nominee Beasts of the Southern Wild — the first feature from Benh Zeitlin — was shot on 16 millimeter, for a total cost of $1.8 million. Presumably much of that budget went toward the rigors of shooting in such an inhospitable location as bayou Louisiana. Braff's drama takes place largely at San Diego's Comic-Con.
While Braff may be reluctant to evolve and adapt, Duncan Sheik is not. The '90s one-hit wonder has reinvented himself as a Tony-winning Broadway composer. (Coincidentally, Braff introduced the Tony Award telecast performance of Sheik's Spring Awakening.) He's handling the score for the American Psycho musical. "All electronic," he told Gothamist, with "20 to 30 percent" cover songs. The rest of the creative team's credentials are just as impressive. Book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has served as a writer and producer for the TV shows Big Love and Glee, while director Rupert Goold is the associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Which nullifies any argument one might make about Braff needing all that loot to secure his undeniably talented collaborators, cinematographer Larry Sher (The Hangover), production designer Judy Becker (Brokeback Mountain), and star Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) — all of whom were involved with Garden State.
But if anything makes the American Psycho Kickstarter more redeemable than Braff's, it's that the musical's initial run would take place at London's Almeida Theatre, a non-profit institution with an educational outreach to some 10,000 kids a year. Donating to Wish I Was Here? Helping the rich get richer. Donating to see an axe-wielding chorus? It's not bloodlust, it's philanthropy!
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