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atticmoth's review
dark
informative
fast-paced
2.0
This book gave me nightmares. This book for real sent me into a depression deeper than when I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I feel like this type of filmmaker-self-help book capitalizes on career anxiety and that’s why there’s so many of them; I would not have read this except for the fact that we recently decided on a second festival run for Stiletto. I’ve read a lot of books like this, and I rarely get anything out of them because the people who write this kind of book do so because they haven’t succeeded in anything else. Have you ever seen any movie by Syd Field of Screenplay fame?
Anyway, there’s all sort of stupid jokes about getting laid and too many top 10 lists, because the kind of people who write these books feel compelled to make it relatable and not boring… like sending festivals a corrupted DVD to win yourself more time in the editing room. Aside from the objectively bad advice, the rest is very questionable…I would not recommend submitting your first movie to Sundance for example. There’s sooo much emphasis on Sundance as the holy grail of indie filmmaking, I wonder if Gore is on their payroll. I think the book is aware that the festival landscape has and will change and you can’t just apply to Sundance anymore, you have to be very strategic. Written in 2009 (before Filmfreeway was founded in 2014!), a lot of the information is obviously out of date, and his UltimateFilmFestival dot com website is not even up anymore!
So there’s not much advice about how to choose festivals, nor is there about how to get into the top ones. The best part of this book is about what to do once you’ve gotten into Sundance (or Telluride or TIFF or South by, which is obviously not applicable to me). There’s a lot of good advice about seeking distribution etc. but it’s not very useful if you’ve only made shorts and your first feature isn’t even on the horizon!
In this book, Chris Gore has such unprofessional advice that if you followed this book as gospel you’d probably get #metoo’d. The book is obviously written for men, though it’s not as bad as a similar one I read that advised the reader to cast pretty ladies so you can see them naked. There’s all sorts of bizarre sexism like “treat your premiere like your virginity” and he only interviewed 2 women in the entire book! The Dan Mirvish interview had at least 3 rapey jokes about sexual favors… this is all contributing to an industry environment that’s already unwelcoming and alienating to female filmmakers! Do better.
About the interviews… over 50% of the book is interviews, including with ex-Sundance programmer Geoff Gilmore, and filmmakers like Morgan Spurlock. The interviews were actually the most helpful part of this book, because they ironically contradict a lot of Chris Gore’s advice. I don’t know about you but I’d rather take advice from Jeremy Coon, the producer of Napoleon Dynamite, than Chris Gore who says a good way to get into parties is by pretending to be Christian Bale’s brother Billy Bale. Jeremy Coon’s interview was by far the most insightful, because he’s at times brutally honest about a lot of things that Gore wasn’t, and I’d prefer to hear that from someone who’s actually “made it.”
Best advice: “Your second film is almost more important than your first…you cannot control success or failure, only how you react to it.”
Anyway, there’s all sort of stupid jokes about getting laid and too many top 10 lists, because the kind of people who write these books feel compelled to make it relatable and not boring… like sending festivals a corrupted DVD to win yourself more time in the editing room. Aside from the objectively bad advice, the rest is very questionable…I would not recommend submitting your first movie to Sundance for example. There’s sooo much emphasis on Sundance as the holy grail of indie filmmaking, I wonder if Gore is on their payroll. I think the book is aware that the festival landscape has and will change and you can’t just apply to Sundance anymore, you have to be very strategic. Written in 2009 (before Filmfreeway was founded in 2014!), a lot of the information is obviously out of date, and his UltimateFilmFestival dot com website is not even up anymore!
So there’s not much advice about how to choose festivals, nor is there about how to get into the top ones. The best part of this book is about what to do once you’ve gotten into Sundance (or Telluride or TIFF or South by, which is obviously not applicable to me). There’s a lot of good advice about seeking distribution etc. but it’s not very useful if you’ve only made shorts and your first feature isn’t even on the horizon!
In this book, Chris Gore has such unprofessional advice that if you followed this book as gospel you’d probably get #metoo’d. The book is obviously written for men, though it’s not as bad as a similar one I read that advised the reader to cast pretty ladies so you can see them naked. There’s all sorts of bizarre sexism like “treat your premiere like your virginity” and he only interviewed 2 women in the entire book! The Dan Mirvish interview had at least 3 rapey jokes about sexual favors… this is all contributing to an industry environment that’s already unwelcoming and alienating to female filmmakers! Do better.
About the interviews… over 50% of the book is interviews, including with ex-Sundance programmer Geoff Gilmore, and filmmakers like Morgan Spurlock. The interviews were actually the most helpful part of this book, because they ironically contradict a lot of Chris Gore’s advice. I don’t know about you but I’d rather take advice from Jeremy Coon, the producer of Napoleon Dynamite, than Chris Gore who says a good way to get into parties is by pretending to be Christian Bale’s brother Billy Bale. Jeremy Coon’s interview was by far the most insightful, because he’s at times brutally honest about a lot of things that Gore wasn’t, and I’d prefer to hear that from someone who’s actually “made it.”
Best advice: “Your second film is almost more important than your first…you cannot control success or failure, only how you react to it.”
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