To Kick or Not to Kick?

You may have been following the latest Kickstarter controversy, which is already feeling a bit, well, moot: Not surprisingly, Zach Braff has successfully kickstarted his new movie, not long after Veronica Mars and co. got theirs into gear.

Personally? I think celebrity use of Kickstarter subtly undermines the ethos of the thing. There's an edge of entitlement that defeats the fun in such a campaign, especially when the celeb is self-promoting, as opposed to raising awareness for someone else's creative project or cause. I prefer kickstarting the unheard-ofs and heretofore unseen. I'll be curious to hear how you folks think about this.

At any rate, it's possible that we are seeing the start of a paradigm shift in how movies get crowd-sourced. And why should the romantic comedy lag behind such a trend? I just received my first invitation to help kickstart a rom-com, from enterprising filmmaker Greg Bowyer, who would like us to help him get his funny love story off the ground.

I know Greg not, though he says nice things about me, so I can't vouch for the quality of his project, beyond noting that its premise is at least... unusual. But if someone's asking Living the RomCom for a kickstart, we all may be in for a lot, lot more of this sort of thing. Apres Greg, le deluge?

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Thanks for the links, Billy.

If Kickstarter helps people get their movies made, I'm all in. Wish Greg the best of luck getting his funding. And I certainly don't begrudge Zach Braff or anyone else who takes proactive steps to get movies made. Hopefully this new trend will result in a better movie selection to chose from and not more of the same-ol' same-ol'.