California Dreamin': The Japan Film Festival

Oh my gosh, I am seriously about to pee myself. Thanks to the support of some very fine people at the London Film School, I have just booked the tickets to L.A. to attend the Tokyo Cowboys world premiere at the Japan Film Festival. You can't imagine the amount of financial footwork that was involved, but, whatever...

Do I call this the world premiere? The film isn't technically finished yet. What we're screening at the JFF doesn't have the final sound mix or the grade.

A moment of silence for Patrick who is not going. He has graciously stepped aside to send me to represent the film.

I will be staying with good friend and fellow LFS alumni Cassie Destino whom I met at the film school. Looking forward to meeting her dog. Looking forward to being in the California sunshine, and looking forward to seeing some very old friends that I have not seen in ages.

TC Investors Invest Time Too

Met up with two of the Tokyo Cowboys investors for coffee to update them on the project. These guys aren't film people like some of our other investors, but they loved the project so much that they put down some of their hard earned cash to support us.

Now, they are asking what they can do to help us to sell the project. These are the kinds of investors that indy filmmakers need.

They are both sending out word to their networks about the film, and Shani, who works for a big University, is trying to organize a special sneak preview screening through their film society. Cool.

Gareth is coming over on Monday to have a look at our track laying to get everything organized for the Dub. We've finished the credits, yeah, so that's the film basically done for the festivals. Whew!

Photo from Ordinary Investing.

Sales Agents, Distributors and Exhibitors...oh my!

Did the second part of the Sales, Marketing and Distribution course with Mia Bays. Good stuff all around. She brought in the Managing Diretor and Sales Agent Andrew Orr from Independent Film Company, distributor Soda Pictures' Ed Fletcher and Jason Woods from Picturehouse - one of the UK's leading cinema bookers.

I was quick with the meishi and the 30 second pitch. Ed Fletcher gave me the best advice about the pitch, which was that when you are pitching to distributors, they are most interested to know the selling points of your film to specific territories.

This is what I've come up with so far: I think that there is definitely an audience in Japan amongst the nearly one million foreigners living in Tokyo alone and amongst the Japanese themselves as we've got two big stars who appear regularly on Japanese TV and in videos (Patrick Harlan's career has skyrocketed since filming). And, of course, there is America. I think the fascination with all things Japan is there and there is a sort of "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" appeal.

As for the UK, I was thinking of the "look what those crazy Americans are doing over in Japan" appeal might be there. That having been said, the film does not focus on the sensational aspects of Japan as so many films about the area do. It's about normal guys finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Our main character, Jewish boy from New York Ken, for example, finds himself performing Christian weddings in order to make a buck while he tries to kick start his career on Japanese TV.

There was a bit of a nuisance with the website going down and email crashing. This right after the workshop, so, of course, I was obsessing about how one of the workshop people might try to hit the site, and how it would be down, and how they would think I was a total looser, but I got over that.

Emailed all of the festivals we submitted to and informed them of the changes.

I'm boring myself to tears now.

Photo is a self portrait of Kimiko Yoshida.