FESTIVAL

ACTOR'S
HOUR

BUY
STUFF

From Stratford to
The Festival Circuit
in Five Easy Centuries
by N. Barry Carver

     Okay, I'm no Shakespeare.  Then again there are those who aren't quite sure that Shakespeare was Shakespeare either.  I have written a line or two before - and gotten paid for it - so The Bard and I have that in common.  I've been told that Ol' Bill wasn't all that fond of writing plays… so we have that too.  I'm an actor.  I've been one since I was six years old and trod the stage as the letter "R" in The Alphabet Pageant.  I didn't care to write… and I've made a reasonable living at it.  I never wanted to produce… and I've held some pretty cool jobs doing that too.  But, at some point, you've got to take what little courage you have left, stare middle-age right in the eye and do it for yourself.
     "But Barry," I hear you ask, "how do I fund that movie I want to find myself in?"  Well, honestly dear Actor's Bone reader and fellow artist… I haven't got the slightest clue.  I can tell you how I did it but I'll guarantee that you'll never be able to reproduce it in a million years.  However, that may be just the point.  Just like your art… it shouldn't be reproducible.  It should be as random, mercurial and quixotic as anything else creative folks do.  Rich friends are of no use.  Grant money can only be had by those who've won grant money before and only if you happen to be filming someone else's pet cause.  Moreover, donors or investors are quirkier than any screenplay ever writ.  Be that as it may, I will not deny you the story:

     "Hello, I'm Barry, and I have a problem."  That's about how it started.  On a website I frequent I posted a note describing my film idea and the fact that I had no money with which to make it.  A week or so later, one of the readers there (Nicholas Fee) was walking along a beach when he was approached by an internet modeling contest.  They'd place his face on the web and, if he was one of the top 10 vote getters he'd have a chance at winning a $50,000 grand prize.  He then posted, on that same site, that he would donate half of any winnings to help me make my film… if we'd all go vote for him.
     Long story short, that's exactly what we all did.  Again and again and again.  Nick finished in first place in the web voting.  The judges, however, ranked him a little lower… so he only won the $10,000 second prize and, being a man of his word, he gave me $5000.  It's a strange thing for people to jump on your bandwagon like that.  It's even stranger that many other actors joined in the contest and spent several hours a day voting for themselves and others… all pledging 50% of any winnings to me and my film.  We've all become a lot closer since that contest began.  At this point I need to tell you that another contestant, a woman whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, Cami Waldeck, also finished in the money.  She too got a $10,000 check and sent me half of it.  Now, I don't know what your preconception of actors was… but I'll bet that this sort of monetary generosity wasn't part of it.
     Okay, so that's $10k in my account from… uhm… modeling contest winnings.  Did I mention that I finished forth?  Eyeball a picture of me sometime and you'll expect me to come in forth in a bowling tournament before I show up in the top ten of a babe fest.  Stranger things have happened… but not a lot stranger.  However,  ten-thousand bucks does not finance a 25-minute, period piece with professional (SAG) actors in real film (none of that DV stuff for us).  As a matter of fact, it's less than half the budget for this FAF sponsored project.  A budget the panel that approved me said was way too low to be realistic.
     So, where did the rest come from?  Well, yes, the condo is now sporting a brand-spanking-new second mortgage and we haven't been out to dinner since they stopped offering the 99-cent Whopper.  But the in-between money, the stuff that kept us going while we made the thing, came, again, from the people who could least afford to spare it.  My fellow thespians.  Even during the commercial strike, while the majority of us work-a-day actor types were scraping to get by, I still got checks for $10, $25 even $100 and all I had to do was promise to keep working on it.  I honestly can't say if it was me they believed in or that they loved the project or they were just worn down by my persistent internet panhandling.  Whatever it was… it got us from there to here all in just two years.
     That is how Romeo & Juliet Revisited got the money to be made.  Every method that shouldn't work - did.  Everyone with a big bankroll, who could peel off enough cash to make our budget and never miss it, avoided us like… well… like fundraising filmmakers.

     By the time this treatise finds its way into newsprint we will have been submitted to nearly 40 festivals and be waiting on pins and needles for our acceptance.  Is there a place for iambic pentameter on the festival circuit of 2002?  Is there room in amongst the car-chases and drug deals for the tale of two mixed up 'dead' kids from 1597?  Can a project made from dimes and nickels, which picks up right where the best known playwright in the world left off, make good in the 21st century?  Well, as I said when I began this note in a bottle to you… I haven't got the slightest clue.  It's that grand?

Actor's Bone Note
     We here at The Actor's Bone are proud to say that N. Barry Carver is an ActorBone member. He who wrote, produced, directed and appears in Romeo & Juliet Revisited. Visit the site at FlickeringImage.com. And despite our admiration and love for Barry, we too wonder how his kisser placed fourth in a modeling contest.