“Canned Laughter” in the Dark – Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You?

One of the pleasures of being Beverly in Movieland is encouraging the rise of talented young filmmakers. Chris Brake wrote to me from the south of England, just as he was launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund his latest project. Chris, a London Film School graduate who makes short films with a fantasy twist, is working on Canned Laughter. It’s a distinctly idiosyncratic project about a retired comedian, Deirdre Gossamer, who misses the limelight. That’s why she knits herself an audience full of fans eager to enjoy her at-home performances. What she doesn’t anticipate, though, is a heckler in their midst.

 As in an earlier effort called “Scraps,” Brake plans to mix live action with puppetry. Having grown up watching E.T. over and over, he’s a lifelong fan of puppets as a way to convey serious ideas. He still marvels at how E.T. “elicits sympathy from a lump of rubber and foam. Everyone always remembers it as a film about an alien, but it’s really not. It’s a story about divorce and the effect that has on a family. And that’s what puppetry can do; it can externalize something fairly abstract and introduce complex themes to an audience in a way that’s more palatable by being symbolic or allegorical.”  

 Though Chris has long been committed to filmmaking as a career, he took a major detour for a while into stand-up comedy. Fortunately, he managed to elude the hecklers who badgered some of his colleagues. His own brand of comedy relied heavily on rhythm, on “finding the perfect words when I write, so the thought of that flow being interrupted was terrifying to me.” He’s now able to see his retreat to film as “almost like seeking a kind of protection from potential criticism.” Film, of course, is a fixed medium: “You can engineer a scene to hit all of the emotional or funny beats you need it to, and it will play like that forever.”

 Chris’s first-ever visit to a cinema was to see Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at the age of six. As he describes it now, “The whole experience has been permanently imprinted on me.  I can recall almost everything about it; where we sat, the smell of the popcorn, the standees in the lobby, the dust in the projector-light, the line we had to wait in that snaked around the block, the woman behind us who made it about 10 minutes into the movie before realizing she was in the wrong screen and storming out shouting, ‘This ain’t the f***in’ Addams Family!’” To the young boy it mattered not at all that this cinema, the only one in his area, was “a total flea-pit.” Despite its sticky floors and stickier seats, he claimed it as a church of sorts, and later (once it gave way to the multiplexes) as “a treasure box of memories.”

  Now the proud father of a teething 10-month-old, Chris looks forward to introducing his son to the joys of moviegoing. As of now the boy is much too young to see a whole movie, “but I’ve sat with him and watched some of the old Laurel and Hardy shorts that my own Dad used to watch with me as a kid. To me they’re really a perfect introduction to cinema because so much of it is silent, visual comedy that’s just beautifully silly. I think it’s a great gateway not only into cinema but also into its heritage.”

To help Chris and his work become part of that heritage, check out his Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cannedlaughter/canned-laughter Or contact him directly at info@chris-brake.com 

 

 

 

 

Kickstarter.com: Giving a Swift Kick to “Men of the Cloth”

What is it with crowdfunding? Everywhere I turn these days, someone’s relying on social media and the kindness of strangers to try to raise money for a worthwhile project. Veteran literary blogger Ron Hogan (Beatrice.com) is drumming up funds to further his goal of introducing readers to great new writers; aspiring filmmaker Owen Dara has tried crowdfunding (along with a lot of blarney) to finance his comedy, Credit Crunch, now filming in Ireland. Even the Lakota Sioux, intent on buying back a piece of sacred land they call Pe’sla, have launched a crowdfunding campaign, which has gained support from such Hollywood types as P. Diddy and Bette Midler.

Fern Reiss, self-publishing guru and CEO of PublishingGame.com, calls crowdfunding “a more egalitarian form of Renaissance patronage.” She’s using this concept –- which incorporates the idea that donors receive tangible gifts in return for their generosity –- as a way to promote her latest book, The Breast Cancer Checklist. And she graciously supplies her personal tips for getting started.

To find out more about how crowdfunding works, I chatted with Vicki Vasilopoulos. As a journalist, Vicki spent years covering the men’s fashion industry. While attending runway shows in Europe, she chanced to meet an Italian master tailor, part of a dying breed of craftsmen trained since childhood to fit and flatter the male form. “Italian men,” says Vicki, “dress better than American women.” Explaining the appeal of a “bespoke” (custom-made) suit, she refers to the sprezzatura, or self-assured but nonchalant personal style, we associate with someone like Marcello Mastroianni.

Vicki, captivated by the humble yet highly-skilled craftsmen who turn out threads worthy of Italian film stars, has now devoted ten years to a documentary film, Men of the Cloth. It follows three Italian master tailors who ply their trade in the U.S. Her enthusiasm for her subjects is contagious. She calls them “the last tribe of the Kalahari, except they just happen to be old-world artisans.”

As Men of the Cloth moves toward completion, Vicki makes full use of a Facebook page that has 1,359 fans, some of them in places as distant as Brazil and Kuala Lumpur. From these fans she’s received modest financial contributions, for which she is tremendously grateful. Now she’s also launched a one-month campaign to drum up finishing funds. Kickstarter.com is a prominent crowdfunding website that establishes ground-rules, collects donations through Amazon.com, and takes a small cut for its trouble. Kickstarter rules require that no money actually change hands unless the entire fundraising goal is met. That’s why this year December 21 is a bigger date for Vicki than Christmas. If her project doesn’t meet its $20,000 goal by then, all she’ll get is a lump of coal in her stocking.

Another Kickstarter rule is that thank-you gifts must be unique items, not purchasable in any store, that specifically represent the project to which they’re connected. Of course such gifts often include DVDs of a finished film and invitations to special screenings. But Men of the Cloth boosters who are passionate about craftsmanship and are able to donate the big bucks have some real treats to choose from, including custom-made cashmere scarves, dress shirts, suits, and even an elegant hand-made leather briefcase.

One of the biggest surprises for Vicki is that interest in her project is not confined to older folks nostalgic for the past. She’s discovered that today’s young hipsters, too, are keen on the charms of fine tailoring, to go along with their passion for hand-crafted bibelots and artisanal chocolate. And maybe old-fashioned letter-writing as well. Without the speed and the wide reach of the Internet, though, Men of the Cloth would still be running around naked.