Year Of The Snake
I was looking for a job in Prague in 2004, and a friend suggested I work for her company, Year of the Snake Productions.
I turned up at the interview and was met by a guy with a leather jacket, sunglasses and a ponytail. He was sitting at a big wooden desk with a Czech woman who clearly wasn't enjoying his borderline sexual harassment. Instead of asking me questions he told me, at length, all about their business plan.
A few years earlier two managers at a call-centre in the UK had had an idea for a film. They had set up this office to raise funds. About twenty young men sat at desks with headsets on ringing up every registered company in the UK and Germany and reading out a script telling them why it would be a smart move to invest in the film "Year Of The Snake."
The two guys had written the script themselves, apparently it was going to be "like Lock Stock but more mainstream". Jason Flemyng was allegedly on board already. Who was going to direct the film? Ah, yes, they were going to do it all themselves. Any previous experience? No. Of course not.
So the job was cold-calling businesses and trying to get them to invest in a film that obviously wasn't going to happen. In return for this I would get a lousy salary but be allowed the job title of "associate producer" so that I "could pick up chicks in bars." That's what he actually said.
I didn't take the job, for some reason. A year later the company collapsed. Apparently they'd raised over $7m and had spent it all on, well, the kind of things you can waste $7m on in Prague.
( Zuowan, Fri 8 Jul 2011, 9:39, 3 replies)

I like the cut of their jib.

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 8 Jul 2011, 9:42, closed)

$7 million
on dumplings they must have been really fat

;)
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 8 Jul 2011, 12:32, closed)

Film Economics
Years ago, when people were making a fuss about low-budget independent movies (El Mariachi, Blair Witch, etc.), I read an article in which a film exec was asked if those films were the wave of the future.

"Nah. You can't steal 2 million dollars from a 1 million dollar budget."
(MrCanoehead Marzipaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!, Sat 9 Jul 2011, 20:17, closed)