We made this movie for $17, and nobody got anything. So it never dawned on me that we would get real people.
I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.
Robert Rodriguez, makes a feature film in 35mm celluloid one and a half hours long, and nobody believed him, I think he wrote a book about it and gave all the details of how he spent the money, even making a 35mm celluloid feature film was possible, at least for Rodriguez.
When I was 25 years old and had no money - and didn't know how to make movies and had no experience - I was able to get $25,000 together, and that film was 'The Brothers McMullen.'
As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.
I didn't go to film school; I studied fine art - I learned how to be a filmmaker on everybody else's money.
You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?
I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.
I'm talking a lot on financing in the Masterclass and I know what it means to because I had to finance my first films, all of them, and I earned my money as a welder in a steel factory doing night shifts while I was still in high school during the day.
So many people wait around for funding, and if they're unsuccessful, they don't make the film; if you've got a good idea, that seems so pointless. There's always a way of doing it; you've just got to find it.
I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.
I have no problem with bands using participant financing schemes like Kickstarter and such. I've said many times that I think they're part of the new way bands and their audience interact and they can be a fantastic resource, enabling bands to do things essentially in cooperation with their audience. It's pretty amazing, actually.
Shows don't reunite because television doesn't work that way. There's no profit model and people go off to do other work.
I love films that are made with almost no budget.
If we're going to have an unconventional budget, we probably need an unconventional process to get there.
I've always defined myself not as a cartoonist, but as an entrepreneur. That was true before I tried cartooning. I always imagined cartooning would be how I got my seed capital. I always thought my other businesses would be the less dominant part of my life.
I want to act in films and use all my financial resources to fund independent music.
Kickstarter has shifted from funding creative projects to funding products and videogames; the biggest funded are consumer electronics and video game projects.
Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they've got enough money saved up to do so.
If you can't categorize a film for a studio, it's really difficult for them to wrap their heads around it and give you the money.
If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.
When you're making an independent film, there is no guarantee that anyone is going to see it, ever.
Decline III, I funded myself, from the studio money. That, and I sold a lot of drugs. Kidding. Don't print that.
Even with a big budget, you can make a niche film.
Crowdfunding as an idea itself isn't new - bands have been doing it since the dawn of time.
