Sex Addict Vlog
Ryan from IFC has asked me to do a
vlog for the film. The idea is to add a new video clip each day (much like a blog, except with moving images!). The first three are now up, and can be accessed from the sex addict website (www.iamasexaddictthemovie.com), or by going straight to: www.iamasexaddictblog.com. I wonder how long I'm going to be able to keep this up...
Howard Stern is watching!
They're interested! Howard Stern's people have agreed to watch the film. I guess my hooker numbers (and expenditures) were high enough to arouse their interest.
Howard Stern's response
Today, the Howard Stern show responded to our "please put us on your show" campaign with the following question:
"How many prostitutes has Caveh been with and how much does he estimate he's spent on sex in his life?"
Today's nagging obsession
What's bothering me most today, for some reason, is the location of the phrase "a film by Caveh Zahedi" on the poster. I was never crazy about the placement there. It detracts from the stark boldness of the title and makes it look like I'm wearing a sandwich board. IFC has already printed thousands of these, and is understandably reluctant to change it now. And yet, I can't help thinking that the poster would be significantly better without my name on the back, and I'm trying to talk them into changing it for all subsequent ads. What do you guys think?
sandwich board
non-sandwich board
Sex Addiction Story #3
(The following true story is Part 3 of the "Dear Howard Stern, please put me on your show..." promotional compaign.)
One day, I decided it would be exciting to have sex with a submissive. I got on the phone, and started calling escort services to request a submissive, but it turns out that there are way more dominants in the world than submissives, by a ratio of about 100 to 1. After several hours on the phone, I finally found a submissive named Raven who told me she used to work at "The Chateau." I had never heard of the Chateau, but I had always been a big Kafka fan so my imagination started to run wild. I made an appointment for Raven to come to my apartment later that night and spent the next several hours fantasizing about all the things we would do together. When she finally arrived, one of the first things she said to me was: "I have really low self-esteem, so please don't call me any names." Well, calling her names was one of the things that I had been fantasizing about, but I tried to make the best of the situation. I ordered her around for a while ("bend over," "get on your hands and knees," etc.) She was perfectly compliant, but I got bored after only a few minutes. There are only so many things you can order someone to do before it loses its transgressive appeal. Raven had a tattoo of the Egyptian god Anubis, so I asked her about it, and it turned out that we shared an interest in Egyptology. We spent most of the remaining hour discussing the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and as she was leaving, I gave her my favorite book on ancient Egyptian literature.
Sex Addiction Story #2
(The following true story is Part 2 of the "Dear Howard Stern, please put me on your show..." promotional compaign.)
One day, I found an ad for a swingers' club. This seemed like the perfect solution to my problem (finding strangers to have sex with), and I became very excited by the idea. My image of what happens at a swinger's club came from a 1970's issue of Playboy magazine that I had secretly perused as a kid. I called the swingers' club, and it was explained to me that it was for couples only. So I spent the next few weeks trying to talk all the women I knew into going with me. I finally managed to persuade a fellow film student, arguing that it would be an interesting adventure and that we didn't have to have sex with anyone if we didn't want to.
We drove to a suburban house in the San Fernando Valley. My mind was filled with fantasies of nubile sexually-voracious co-eds. The door opened, and we were greeted by an overweight middle-aged couple. They ushered us inside, and introduced us to a half-dozen other overweight middle-aged couples, all drinking martinis and telling dirty jokes. Neither of us was even remotely attracted to anyone there, so we locked ourselves in a room and just talked for an hour, and then left precipitously. It was one of my most vivid experiences of the radical disparity between sexual fantasy and sexual reality.
Sex Addiction Story #1
(The following true story is Part 1 of the "Dear Howard Stern, please put me on your show..." promotional compaign.)
When my first wife left me and I was suddenly single again, my first impulse was to try to find someone to have sex with, but this proved more difficult than I had anticipated. I also got a job as a sperm donor during this period, and started looking at a lot more porn (it was part of the job), and I started noticing the many ads from available women wanting to have sex. I called some of these numbers, and found that they were all routed to the same "sex club," which claimed to have dozens of women members who were looking for "no strings attached" sex, but that I had to pay the sex club several hundred dollars in order to get the phone numbers of these "available" women. There was a one month plan, a three month plan, etc. I opted for the one month plan, payed my few hundred dollars, and was given a phone number to call between the hours of 4 to 6, and told to ask for B.J. and that he would give me the numbers of available women. I called everyday for weeks, and was almost never able to get through. When I did get through, I would be given a number that usually turned out to be disconnected. But once I did get a number that someone actually answered. It was an African-American woman and single mother, who lived in South Central and had no car. I asked her what kind of stuff she was into and she said things like, "long walks on the beach," "candlelight dinners," etc. I said, "No, I mean, what kind of sex are you into?" and she replied: "Isn't it a bit early to be talking about stuff like that?" As we continued to converse, it gradually dawned on me that this woman had been told that she was joining a dating service for marriage-minded singles, whereas I had been told that I was joining a sex club for horny available women. I was morally outraged, and thought of complaining to the police or better business bureau, but I was too embarrassed.
Howard Stern
Today, Courtney from IFC asked, very politely, if I could tell her any salacious stories from my sex addiction days. She is trying to get me on the Howard Stern show, and is looking for a way to make me more appealing to them. I, personally, think Howard Stern would really like the film, but I suppose it's hard to persuade his producers to check it out. One thing we have going for us is that our lead actress, porn star
Rebecca Lord (below), has appeared on the Howard Stern show twice. I would have thought that would be enough to peak their interest, but apparently not. So I duly obliged with the aforementioned salacious stories.
The Most Amazing Thing in The Distribution Universe
There's a story in the Mahabharata. Three brothers are dying of thirst in the desert. They decide to split up, the idea being that they are more likely to find water if they each head in a different direction. The first brother, dying of thirst, eventually stumbles upon a lake. He is about to have a drink when a voice from the lake says: "Wait, first answer my question." The first brother thinks to himself that one little sip won't hurt, and that he can always answer the question later. So he takes a sip and falls unconscious beside the lake.
The second brother eventually comes along, sees the first brother lying there unconscious, tells himself he'll check up on his brother right after he has a drink, and is about to quench his thirst when a voice from the lake says: "Wait, first answer my question." The second brother thinks to himself that one little sip won't hurt, and that he can always answer the question later. So he takes a sip and falls unconscious beside his brother.
The third brother then comes along, sees his two brothers lying there unconscious, tells himself he'll check up on them right after he has a drink, and is about to quench his thirst when a voice from the lake says: "Wait, first answer my question." The third brother says, impatiently: "Okay, fine. What's your question?" The voice from the lake says: "What is the most amazing thing in the Universe?" The third brother replies: "The most amazing thing in the Universe is that everyone dies and yet everyone acts like they're never going to." The voice from the lake says: "Yes, that is the most amazing thing in the Universe. You may now drink."
But what about film distribution? What is the most amazing thing in the Distribution Universe?
The most amazing thing in the Distribution Universe is that there's not enough time. Everything has to be done in a hurry. The marketing campaigns are rushed, the poster designs are rushed, and the trailers are rushed. No one has the time (or incentive) to do anything until it's as good as it can possibly be. The days of the master craftsman, proud of his craft, are over. We live in a throwaway culture, the clock is ticking, and the Distribution Universe's motto is: "We're out of time, therefore it's good enough."
Frank Black once said that the only form of protest left is quality.
Meanwhile, we are dying of thirst.
Cinemascope
Today, the new Cinema Scope magazine arrived in the mail. I love this magazine. It makes me feel so film-illiterate. There was an article about
Sex Addict by Jason McBride, which was mostly positive, except for the subtle undercurrent of disapproval, such as this one, my favorite:
"Soon, the filmmaker is jerking off in confessionals - it's difficult to imagine a more apt metaphor for Zahedi's entire project."
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
In the Winter issue of
Filmmaker magazine, I wrote a self-distribution manifesto in which I wrote:
The truth is that self-distribution is fun, and not only is it fun, it's empowering. Which brings me to the heart of the matter: whether an outside distributor would do a "better" or a "worse" job releasing the film is immaterial. The real question is: why are we making films in the first place? The answer for me has something to do with wanting to humanize the world. Hegel teaches us that we make the world our own by altering it, by leaving our own imprint on it, by reshaping it in our own image. This is the crux of my argument for self-distribution. It's less alienating. It's more organic. And it's more human.
Well, I still agree with what I said, but it's also true that having an established distribution company on your side is also fun, and is also arguably less alienating, more organic, and more human than doing it all yourself. Because while self-empowerment may be an asymptotic ideal (however eloquently Ralph Waldo Emerson may argue for it), we are all ultimately parts of a larger human community and the do-it-yourself ethos is ultimately a myth. No one makes a film alone, and no one distributes a film alone. And the truth of the matter is that I am thrilled to have IFC on my side, despite the inevitable frictions that any engagement with any other human being is bound to provoke. It's all part of the give-and-take of human intercourse, and that is how we truly humanize the world.
Blog Fatigue
Blog blah blah...
Adventures in Marketing
The distributor/filmmaker relationship is a delicate one. Each party needs the other's cooperation, and fears the other's lack of judgment. This often leads to complex carrot-and-stick strategies of persuasion, along with subtle and not-so-subtle forms of intimidation. It's a love/hate thing that sometimes also devolves into simple rhetorical pleading.
Today's supplication:
Dear Ryan,
I apologize if I'm being a pain in the butt, but I watched the final version of the
trailer (which nobody bothered to show me) on the new sex addict web site today. I don't think the red horizontal line in the "not" of "not playing at a theater near you" works at all. I think it should either be a red "X" that crosses out the entire word in real time (i.e. with the left side of the cross first, and then the right side of the cross, as if someone was crossing the word out in real time) or it should just be left alone with no red line. I feel really strongly about this. It's a gag that's just not working. Can we PLEASE change this?
Thanks.
Caveh
The Puffy Chair
Today I got a group e-mail from The Puffy Chair folks asking people to put up stickers to help promote their movie. They are printing stickers of the puffy chair in question, with no text.
It's a nice image, and I like the enigmatic simplicity of it. Also, The Puffy Chair is my favorite film of last year.
If you would like to help them with putting up stickers, contact Jen Tracy at: jen@duplassbrothers.com.
And if you haven't seen the film, I can't recommend it highly enough. It opens on June 2nd in Austin, Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Denver, and then in L.A. and New York later in June.
I Don't Hate Marketing Anymore
I used to hate Marketing. I used to hate advertisements. I still do a little. But I'm also more reconciled to the idea that marketing isn't necessarily the Devil. And there are so many great ads now, like the latest
Spike Jonze gap commercial.
And yet, there's something so appealing about an organization like AA, which operates by "attraction, not promotion." I used to try to make films according to that credo, and never did any promoting whatsoever. But the end result was poverty and obscurity.
I was resigned to this, believing that I was making my films for posterity. But at a certain point, it became clear that I couldn't continue to make films if they weren't making their money back (which they weren't). And it also became clear that filmmaking is a competitive sport, and that the only way to sustain a film career was to play by the rules, to enter the box office arena, and to engage in the cultural conversation of late capitalism, however shallow or distasteful.
And the surprise (thank you, God) was that it's fun. It's as fun as anything else. Or, to put it another way, it, too, is God. And so, I don't hate marketing anymore.
Chelsea Hotel
Song of the Day: Chelsea Hotel, by Leonard Cohen.
Museum of Sex
IFC is planning to do a members only advance screening of "Sex Addict" at the Museum of Sex in New York City. Apparently they have 18,000 members. I had never heard of the Museum of Sex before, but their website makes you want to visit:
museum of sex. What a great idea.
IFC Rocks
Good news. IFC agreed to print another batch of postcards, with nipples. Go IFC. They've been responsive, and they're really trying to meet me halfway. They're nice people, and I hope I haven't been giving them too hard a time.
It's just a tricky balancing act, to find a viable equilibrium between aesthetic principles and economic concerns. And the truth is that I'm enjoying the push and pull of marketing decisions and marketplace necessities. It's a lot like shooting a film, and having to balance perceived artistic integrity with budgetary constraints.
Fear of Nipples
Vicky from IFC explained to me today that the postcards, too, have been printed without the nipples. The reason given: some theaters might not want to use them if they have nipples. But why the preemptive censorship?
Morality Merchants
Vicky from IFC explained to me today that it's the vendors who run wildposting in Manhattan who have determined that my poster of a scantily clad prostitute qualifies as nudity, and that they're the ones who are refusing to let IFC put up the posters around town. The only place that IFC has any jurisdiction for putting up the poster is at the IFC Theater, which is the only place in New York where it's going to be displayed, apparently.
It's funny, because in Europe, this wasn't an issue at all. The problem in Europe was that the posters kept getting stolen.
"Biatch"?
Today, I finally figured out how the comments part of a blog works. I was thrilled to see that I had had six comments so far, one of which, by Brian Brooks of Indiewire, was particularly memorable. I quote:
"Just so you know biatch, your blog costs money to host, so 'thanks Scion.' :)"
This was in response to my very first blog ever, entitled "Boycott Scion," in which I try my best to register at least a modicum of protest against the advertocracy in which we live. I had been offered a blog on Indiewire, but nobody had bothered to inform me that the price of having a blog on Indiewire was that an advertisement for a product that I had never chosen to endorse would loom beside everything I wrote.
I wasn't sure what the word "biatch" meant (although I was pretty sure it was derogatory) so I looked it up online and found the following definition:
(1) Synonym for "skank-ass ho"
(2) Epithet used to induce feelings of inferiority and/or emasculation
Interesting. I love learning new words. Thank you for that, Brian.
But what really baffles me is that an obviously intelligent person who writes for an online publication as prestigious as Indiewire would take offense at my attempt to call into question the corporate hegemony over every aspect of our lives.
I once had a friend who told me excitedly that he had recently come up with a brilliant idea for making a shitload of money. His idea: have audio advertisements at gas pumps so that when people fill their tanks with gas, they are bombarded with ads at the same time.
Needless to say, I was appalled. As if there wasn't enough noise pollution in the world.
I understand that things cost money, and that Indiewire has no choice but to offer advertising space on their website if they are to pay the bills. But to be offended that someone would question the optimalness of this state of affairs strikes me as remarkable. It reminds me of the scene in "Gone With The Wind" in which the African-American slaves enlist to fight on the side of the South.
After the money's gone
Gauguin said: "A painting, is never finished. It is merely abandoned."
A trailer is never finished either. One simply runs out of time and money.
Today, we ran out of time and money. In other words, the trailer is finished.
Against The Law
Our poster is apparently against the law.
I got this e-mail today from Ryan Werner at IFC, regarding putting the poster up around the city.
"We can't wild post the nipples. Sorry. Strange that i could wild post Chloe Sevigny giving Vincent Gallo a blow job though."
Before:
After:
I, Jonathan Richman
Conversation yesterday:
Ryan Werner (IFC ): Do you have the rights to use the Jonathan Richman song in the trailer?
Caveh (emphatically): Yes.
Ryan: In writing?
Caveh: Uh... sort of.
Ryan: You don't have it in writing?
Caveh: Well, I have it in writing for festival rights but not for all rights. But Jonathan said it was fine, and that we could use the song for all rights. I just haven't gotten around to the paperwork yet.
Ryan: Caveh, you're going to give me a heart attack. You have to get him to sign a piece of paper saying you have the rights to use the song in the trailer.
Caveh: Okay. I'm seeing him tonight. I'll ask him.
Later that night:
Caveh: Hey Jonathan.
Jonathan Richman: Hey Caveh.
Caveh: Can you sign a piece of paper saying we have the rights to use the song in the trailer?
Jonathan Richman: Sure.
Jonathan takes a piece of paper and writes:
Hi, this is Jonathan, and I, on this date, March 7, 2006, and with this piece of paper, give Caveh permission to use my song in trailers he might want to make for this movie, "I Am A Sex Addict."
Yours Truly,
Jonathan Richman
San Francisco
Not Coming Soon
IFC has pushed back the NY opening of the film until April 12th. The good news is that we have one more week to get our act together. The bad news is that we only have one extra week to get our act together.
Coming Too Soon
Today, IFC sent me a new cut of the trailer. In some ways, it's better than the last one, and in other ways it's worse. My main objection is that it's trying a little too hard to appeal to a mainstream audience, and totters precariously on the brink of not having any integrity whatsoever. IFC is trying to appeal to a wider audience, which I can understand, but from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump to no longer appealing to the audience that we actually made the film for.
The great Richard Leacock
Today, I went to a tribute screening of "Primary" and "Crisis" by Ricky Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. Ricky Leacock, who is now 84 years old, introduced the films, and did a Q and A afterwards. In 1982, when I was just out of college, I spent a summer living in an MIT dorm room. Ricky Leacock was teaching at MIT at the time, so I walked into his office one day and introduced myself. I was just a pretentious twenty-one year old kid who fancied himself a filmmaker, but Ricky was kind enough to invite me (and my friends) to his house for dinner. He welcomed us with open arms, cooked us a delicious meal, and regaled us with stories about Robert Flaherty and Jean-Luc Godard and John F. Kennedy. It was one of those evenings you never forget.
I hadn't seen him since that day, and he is obviously not long for this world. But his impish spirit still shines more brightly than ever. He is one of the most important filmmakers in the history of cinema, and it's sad that he will have to die before he receives his just due. For me, it was an honor just to have crossed paths with him.
Coming Soon
Today, Ryan Werner from IFC sent me the trailer. I love it! It's so much better than anything I could have come up with.
Welcome to the Real World
Today, we finalized the poster. We came to a compromise decision - not what I would have wanted exactly, and not what IFC would have wanted exactly either. But it's not so off the mark as to feel dirty. I guess this is what it's like to be living in the real world.
Nipples
When I negotiated the deal with IFC, I tried to include in the contract that I would have final say on all art work, but they wouldn't give it to me, arguing that, if they gave it to me, I could veto everything they did and prevent them from marketing the film in a timely and profit-maximizing manner. Moreover, they assured me that they prided themselves on being filmmaker-friendly and that they would do everything in their power to accomodate my preferences, short of committing marketing suicide. It sounded reasonable, so I agreed. But now, the nipples on the poster are going to be airbrushed so that media publications will print it. The nipples are the whole point of the poster. So much for transgression.
Before:
After:
Das Kapital
IFC Films told us today that our budget for a San Francisco premiere is $500. Hmm... We were hoping for $5,000.
