By Nancy Koan, edited by Jim Luce
My mother used to have a saying that when something was hard to do it "was like pulling teeth." I suppose with modern dentistry that imagery seems a bit archaic, but still it has a ring of truth.
How do you get something to budge that should, but it simply refuses to let go. In the case of teeth, it is the root, and in the case of raising money to finish films, the investor.
I have made three films to date. Each one was much easier to finance and finish than the film that has captivated my attention for the last ten years, Deep in the Deal.
Magical Moon Priestess and the Green Man from Nancy’s film, Which Witch?
Deep, starring the likes of Gloria Steinem and Richie Havens, is my unborn child, waiting for delivery. A little funding is desperately needed to push it out.
My first project My Dinner with Abbie moved on greased wheels. Abbie Hoffman had just returned to New York after living underground for many years. I met him when I was a photo stylist and he was on the cover of a magazine that I worked with.
Abbie had been a hero to me; I had devoured his autobiography, Soon To be A Major Motion Picture, and was inspired by Revolution for the Hell of It.
But I was by no means a radical, let alone a filmmaker.
With youthful zeal, I simply decided that Abbie should be in a film about his re-entry into America's Above Ground and his fiftieth birthday. And that I should make it.
Nancy Cohen’s film, My Dinner With Abbie Hoffman, was well received.
Most young filmmakers have chutzpah. The lucky ones also have inherited wealth. Filming isn’t cheap, even filming with video. Unlike Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, you can’t make a movie on toilet paper.
But alas I had no trust fund and no track record. What I did have, though, was a darling boyfriend whose parents were convinced that our joint venture would help their son make his mark in the media and they had only to lay out the seed money.
It was very little to them, but meant everything to us. It paid for the filming and then for a few years, we both worked at various jobs, until we could afford a proper edit.
The film was picked up instantly at the New York IFP Festival and suddenly we had another expense. We had to blow up the film from video to 16 mm and make prints as was required by the Berlin Film Festival.
A small price to pay for the honor.
My next two projects were commissioned in the U.K. under a wonderful program sponsored by Channel Four. The Channel was hungry for programming and put out a call to filmmakers for ideas.
They bought two of mine, Which Witch?, a film about feminism, magic and witches in modern England, and Malcolm McLaren – Not for Sale, a documentary that looked into the prospect of having an artist serve as London’s first mayor. In this case, Sex Pistol creator Mr. McLaren.
The pay was nominal, but they covered the basic budget, though anything we wanted to add had to come from our own pockets. Of course, we spent our own pounds, but for the most part, we didn’t feel ripped off and we were permitted to hold on to the ownership of the film after broadcast.
About that time, I fell in love with the idea of a film about “consciousness” – the last frontier.
My partner and I believed that change could only come through the mind and decided to go on a journey, talking to people about their beliefs in the possibility of a peaceful world.
An important topic – yes, without a doubt. But not one that clearly fitted into any category. If it had been a film about breast cancer, I would have known which foundations to apply to for grants.
But consciousness and peace? It’s an idea, an imagining… who would help us get to our goal?
Again, we started close to home. My partner’s childhood friend had a very successful clothing business, Komodo, and gave us our seed money which paid for the first few months of shooting.
I used a borrowed video camera. We didn’t even have a working credit card; a friend used his card so we could rent a car for one of the first adventures in the story.
It was tight, but fun.
I joined a media organization that has since gone ‘belly up’, but whose role was to serve as our fiscal sponsor. That meant that if anyone wanted to contribute funds, the organization’s 501(c)3 would provide them a tax deduction.
We received a small amount of funding from Puffin Organization, American Express, and from Mercury Records, most notably Danny Goldberg.
Danny had loved Abbie Hoffman and was keen on the idea of our film. Plus the film was also using music and Danny believes that music is the best way to put a message across.
We soon realized that the film was becoming larger than our original concept. It involved trips back and forth to London. We were constantly cutting preview tapes to try and raise monies to keep it all going and that, too, added to the expense.
With the help of my cousin, Dennis Friedman, we threw a terrific fund-raising party at his apartment. Chef-friends made delicious food and wine was contributed by Antinori Vineyards. Everyone had a blast; the only trouble was that I was having so much fun, I forgot to ask for money.
On off-shooting days, I finished work on a narrative film script, innocently thinking that a feature might move faster than a documentary.
The actor Ed Asner showed strong interest in playing one of the leads, but getting a producer with chops isn’t easy and the film is in development. In other words, no way to use my writer’s fees for my other project.
Finally, after shooting a solid amount of material, my partner went back to the U.K. where he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Because his family had paid some sort of insurance fees, he was given a one-time payout for having the disease. It was terrible, but he quickly cashed in his chips and brought me to London where we hoped to finally finish the film.
I used the last of my cash from selling my insider’s rights to my apartment and so, homeless, I went there, assured that the film would be done.
We cut a great forty minutes on what was an expensive editing set up, were asked to make some other short projects, but when finished with the job, couldn’t find enough money to finish the edit of Deep in the Deal.
Cut to the present. I am no longer with my partner. More film was shot to include some of the strange things that have happened in the last decade.
Suddenly peace has become a topic of discussion and the film is right on the money except I still don’t have any. I have found a young, exuberant editor who really wants to put her hands on the amazing footage, but also needs to eat. So I still need funds.
I have put a short preview of Deep In the Deal on a fund-raising program called kickstarter (view). This site allows investors to get fiscally involved at whatever feels comfortable.
According to kickstarter:
The filmmaker, like Alice before her, travels down the rabbit hole, chasing after a fellow Utopian, in a quest to understand a world that stopped making sense.
She and the Mad Hatter want to live in paradise but don't know how. Without a map, they search, asking characters along the way for clues to how to find it and keep it.
He thinks the world is coming to an end at any moment and she hopes to feel the sense of community she experienced as a young girl at Woodstock.
To confuse matters, they fall in love and have to break the news to their respective partners!
Join Gloria Steinem, Mike Leigh, Richie Havens, Eddie Izzard, Rupert Sheldrake, Terrence McKenna, Robert Cohen, aliens and many others as they try and help Andy and Nancy find their way back to the garden.
There is music, left-wing humor and heart in this film for our time.
The only caveat is that I need to raise $9,000 by the end of this December or none of the pledges will count. The clock is ticking.
You can view part of Deep in The Deal posted on YouTube.
My Dinner with Abbie’s preview is also available on YouTube.
My Dinner with Abbie was reviewed by the New York Times.