O C T O B E R   2 9 ,   2 0 0 7

NEW SITE STUFF
There's nothing on the film front to report - nothing good, anyway. We sent the Dial 9 to Get Out script to a name actor, and his agent gave us the old "Let's talk about my client's interest in your project after you get it funded" line. So that's a bit of a dead end for now. Meanwhile, my Japanese distributors Trans World are really dragging their feet about paying me the money they owe me for Claustrophobia, even though my old sales agent finally signed over the rights to the deal to me (as reported below). I still don't know how much money we're even talking about, so I don't know how annoyed I should be with the situation. Anyway, if 2006 was good for me, film-wise, then 2007 was definitely an off year. Well, 2008 is just around the corner.

My life continues to chug happily along: I am getting a lot of nice freelance gigs and have even started writing a novel (which at least doesn't cost me anything to produce). This site is chugging along as well. I'm pleased to now offer RSS feeds for those of you who visit frequently and get a kick out of my Lists of 9, my Movie Reviews, and even these occasional Development Updates. Simply add this link to your RSS reader (Google Reader or whatever you prefer): http://feeds.cassavafilms.com/tapio.rss. You can also click on the little RSS icon in your Web browser's URL field when you go back to the Cassava Films home page.

While we're discussing frequent site usage, I have set up an ill-fitting but functional user poll right here, using some free software. Please take 2 seconds to answer it. I really would like to know how often people visit this site. Thanks!

S E P T E M B E R   1 4 ,   2 0 0 7

ANOTHER LONG-OVERDUE UPDATE
Nothing major has happened since my last update (hence the non-film-related photo at left), but I figured I owed this site's readers a little news. First of all, despite my IFTA arbitration win against my former sales agent MonteCristo Entertainment last spring, its President and CEO Michael Taverna failed to pay me my award. Then, two months after the announcement of my victory in the claim, his lawyer wrote that Taverna had since severed his ties to MonteCristo Entertainment - how convenient for him! - and thus a) couldn't pay me anything, and b) couldn't assign the rights to the foreign sales deals over to me. So my attorney put some pressure on them, and then voila, suddenly Taverna and his lawyer were able to pay me a little (though not everything). Then my new sales agent - also an attorney - put more pressure on, and then finally, a couple of weeks ago, Taverna signed over the rights to me, after nearly a year of insisting that he didn't have the power to do so. Funny how the story changes when the legal screws are applied, no? So anyway, while I still haven't been able to collect on the full award, getting the rights to these deals - which means I can finally collect on the sale of my film Claustrophobia to Japan - could help. No money yet from my Japanese distributors, but they seem honest.

Meanwhile, I recently left this Web producing job that I'd had since January. There was no drama-filled resignation announcement, and no bad blood - I just decided that I needed to work in design and art direction again. Project management is stressful and not particularly creative. So a-job-hunting I will go. Oh, but there is one intriguing bit of Dial 9 to Get Out news that I just heard, and that is that we finally got the script to a well-known actor's agent. Hopefully both agent and actor will like the script and sign on, in which case development can move forward at a more rapid pace. If I write nothing more about this here, then you'll know what happened!

A P R I L   1 5 ,   2 0 0 7

A LONG-OVERDUE UPDATE
Many apologies for the long silence. (Though it's not like I vanished off the face of the planet, as I have continued to add Lists of 9 and Movie Reviews to this site, even though it's been four months since I last posted a Development Update.) The fact is, I had been waiting for my IFTA arbitration claim against Claustrophobia's former foreign sales agent MonteCristo Entertainment (run by Michael Taverna) to finish up before updating anybody about it. The good news is that I won the claim! I just found out last week. This means that Michael Taverna is officially required to pay me the money that he owes me and assign the rights to the Thailand, UK and (most importantly) Japan deals over to me directly, so that I can hopefully start collecting on the royalties from sales to these countries. Of course Michael Taverna hasn't paid me yet. And there's no guarantee that he will. If he doesn't, you can bet I will continue to assert that Michael Taverna and MonteCristo are people that film producers should avoid working with.

In the meantime, I got a fulltime job again. My first since quitting Paramount back in 2002. It's a bit strange to be back in the corporate world - I am once again working for a company that specializes in Web design, only I am now a producer instead of a designer, which is a bit closer to what life as a film director is like. In other words, lots of planning, lots of managing, lots of decisions and lots of deadlines to worry about.

I certainly haven't given up my filmmaking dreams, however, and Dial 9 to Get Out continues to sputter ahead, however slowly. (It didn't help that one of my two producers got a job working on the TV show Lost in Hawaii just a couple of weeks after we signed our agreement.) My friend Stephanie, who has considerable casting experience, has joined the team as our casting director and is trying to contact certain name actors that we'd like to talk to, even as Gregory and Meta, the producers, prepare budgets and attempt to raise money. It would be nice to post some solid updates about this film soon, but in the event that it can't get off the ground - it's always a question of money, as you know - at least I'm now pulling in a regular salary again, so if nothing else, in a couple of years I will have saved up enough to shoot another self-funded low budget picture. That might make for a slender Updates page in the interim, but I will make my third feature film eventually. I think that's inevitable. It's just a question of what film, and when.

Copyright © Mark Tapio Kines 2008