Director wises up to indie filmmaking with 'The Reel Truth'
New Yorker Reed Martin burned through $30,000 of his own money trying to make a short film and learned the hard way how difficult it is to steer even a modest project to successful completion. "Every step of the way," he says, "everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong."
Chastened, Martin became curious about other filmmakers' horror stories. He interviewed Danny Boyle, Christine Vachon, Doug Liman, Barbara Kopple, Alexander Payne, Darren Aronofsky and Werner Herzog along with dozens of indie film execs. He says he asked everyone two questions: " 'What's the worst advice you ever got?' and 'What do you wish somebody had told you that would have saved you a lot of trouble?' "
Martin compiled the nuggets of wisdom in his new book, "The Reel Truth." Among a raft of legal, technical, interpersonal and financial obstacles detailed in the book, Martin says, "the most egregious roadblock that filmmakers run into is the wrong producer, who can oftentimes be a charlatan with made-up production credits."
