You may have noticed, dear IndieWire reader, that Hollywood is not in a great place right now. It is, perhaps, not so unlike a grifting, alcoholic, sleazebag absent father that you may have cut ties with years ago — only to find out that he’s died and is haunting every single member of your family except for you.
OK, so the above plot of the film “D(e)ad” isn’t an entertainment industry allegory; it’s much more of a family comedy of (having no) manners, both warm and dark like a cup of hot chocolate. But it is also a fascinating case study of possibilities that can happen when a filmmaking team keeps creative control through every stage of the creative and distribution process, and then marshals their interested audience to go DM movie theaters on Instagram.
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“D(e)ad” was written by and stars “Game Changer” veteran Isabella Roland and was directed by longtime actor/TV writer Claudia Lonow. The mother/daughter team recruited most of their family and several friends from the Dropout Cinematic Universe — including Vic Michaelis and Brennan Lee Mulligan — and leveraged that Diet Quibi clout to raise $250,000 on Kickstarter; it was a huge upgrade from the $30,000 producers Erin Dellorso and Julianne Dowler had been planning to crowdfund on Seed & Spark for additional post-production costs. The film is set for a nice run at over 69 theaters, beginning September 10 in Los Angeles, but screening throughout the US, Canada, and Europe over the next couple of months.
Working on the crowdfunding project with stalwart comedy/improv producer Laser Webber helped arm the “D(e)ad” filmmaking team with more than the assets and graphics package they’d need to run a campaign — although they were working diligently on all of that and shooting Kickstarter interviews/BTS/bits in studio spaces just off set during production, Dowler told IndieWire. The crowdfunding prompted them to lean into a narrative of a proudly independent project that was going to reach its audience without traditional Hollywood gatekeepers.
Not everyone can gather enough money from a friends-and-family round to fund a 15-day shoot, and certainly not everyone has been the beneficiary, as Roland has, of the pure Horse Girl love for the cast of “Dimension 20: The Seven.” But the tools that Webber and the “D(e)ad” team have used to generate their own fully independent theatrical run are ones that any clever film project can take advantage of — including a very engaged approach to building a newsletter audience from the crowdfunding participants.
“Because we were getting so much interactive feedback with the nature of the Kickstarter, and having this newsletter — that Laser was also intrinsic to — and having a following that cares about the updates, people via the Kickstarter had been sharing connections,” Roland told IndieWire. “Those connections are what got us our initial screenings. As soon as that started to work, I mean, now we’ve gotten dozens upon dozens of more screenings from people being like, ‘Hey, theater, I want this movie,’ and the theaters going to us, like, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of people calling us saying they want this movie. Can we do this?’”
Indeed, in one of the latest editions of the “D(e)ad” newsletter, the team confirmed that at least 12 screenings have come about because of fans tagging their local theaters on an Instagram reel of Roland’s explaining the movie’s DIY marketing and distribution strategy. “D(e)ad’s” workaround of the studio/festival/traditional distribution route has been as vindicating as it’s been successful.
“My mom and I, Julianne and Erin, Jonathan [Schmock] and Brennan, have so much experience dealing with development people and executives who — it’s their job to just fucking, bow-and-arrow kill your dreams in front of you. They tell you that your writing isn’t good enough and your ideas are bad. To get to a place through just genuinely doing art, believing our ideas are good, and ‘I’ll show you…’ It’s beyond pipe dream,” Roland said.
“Especially if you write female-centered things, [the notes are] you know, ‘She seems shrill,” Lonow told IndieWire. “I mean, it’s terrible. So when we were doing this, there’s this feeling where I’m used to watching a scene and my reaction is to turn to the executive behind me and go, ‘OK, what now?’ But the experience of the Kickstarter and watching Izzy’s development as an artist, building her following… I just felt like, I really think they’re gonna want to see what she does. I think people seem like they’re really into her!”
“Thanks, mom,” Roland added.
But Dowler, as the producer, can confirm that the Kickstarter far exceeded her expectations, and the confidence of the production backing itself allowed them to make better art. “We had such little money [for production] and time is just so precious,” Dowler said. “So pre-production was intense, and it was so worth it because the set went so smoothly. We wrapped early, most days. I mean, it was just a dream.”
“There should be two groups of people who decide what art happens; it’s artists and the people who want to see art. Hollywood has turned into something where gatekeepers and Fintech people are saying they get to decide what art is, and obviously, that is not working very well,” Roland said. “Having the opportunity and the privilege to amass this small but very mighty audience — that I am still flabbergasted are continuing to support this movie in this way — we’re able to have a group of people who are saying, ‘We want this’ and be able to go, ‘You got it.’”
“D(e)ad” is screening in select theaters now.
