I had learned a nice trick on Bubba Ho-tep. Have you ever seen those portable office trailers located on construction sites? I had one delivered to my house on the driveway in my backyard. It made for a terrific editing room and the location was fantastic—just twenty paces from my kitchen and refrigerator. For under a hundred and fifty dollars a month, a spacious editing room delivered to your house? Hard to beat.
I had been editing John Dies at the End for going on two months and one day in early December the phone rang. It was Trevor Groth from Sundance. First some backstory …
We had submitted an early cut to the Sundance Film Festival but since Thanksgiving weekend had come and gone, and Sundance had already announced in the press the list of lucky entrants, we figured it was another lost cause—until that surprising call.
“Don, it’s Trevor from Sundance. We would like to add John Dies at the End to the Midnight Program at this year’s festival.” There was a long silence on my end. Trevor probably thought my mind was moving slow that morning, but in actuality the neurons in my brain were firing faster than the speed of light.
Oh my God, are we really in? Wait! Can we finish the movie in time? How many days to the festival? We haven’t even started the music score! What about visual effects … hundreds are unfinished! How will I get there? Audiences might hate this movie. Are the hotels sold out? Which actors will come? We need a publicist! Why didn’t he invite Bubba Ho-tep? Is this a prank?
“Hi, Trevor, uh…”
“Don, are you there?”
“Yes. Yes. That’s great news, Trevor. Thank you. I’ve got a lot of work here to finish.”
“You will have your film finished in time then, yes?”
I was tempted to be honest, but my throat suddenly constricted as I realized how important it was that I answered that casual question correctly. So, I coughed. “Yes, shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks, Trevor. We’ll see you up in Park City.”
What civilians never know, but most Sundance veterans are quite familiar with, is that an invitation to the most important film festival in the world entirely destroys your holiday season. When an invitation comes in for this mid-January festival, you are forced into a nightmarish forty-day schedule of excruciating and relentless pressure to get your film finished in time. No Christmas dinner, no New Year’s celebrations—just a cycle of editing rooms, sound studios, visual effects meetings, composer consultations, and color correction. And it costs a ton of money. Yet dozens of underfunded filmmakers who win entry have no choice but to immediately pony up the tens of thousands of dollars required to get their films finished on time. We managed to finish just in time and I actually hand-carried the final film with me up into the snowy mountains of Utah.
For the first-timer it’s an out-of-body experience. They treat you really well; in fact, on arrival I was given a free coupon to visit the Timberland suite in the festival hotel, which entitled me to a free parka and some cool snow boots. Paul Giamatti had been through it several times before and it was fun watching him chaperone our two young stars, Rob and Chase, as they were inundated with swag. All the luxury brands were there, falling over each other to give free stuff to the actors. They were not as generous to directors but nevertheless watching Chase, Rob, Clancy, and Paul score swag was fun.
The day before my premiere I had the pleasure of attending the Filmmakers Luncheon hosted by Sundance founder Robert Redford up at his Sundance Mountain Resort. They loaded all the directors in buses and we drove from Park City up through a snowstorm to the resort. I happened to sit next to filmmaker Rodney Ascher, who was to become one of the bright lights in creative documentary filmmaking. I found him to be a brilliant and funny guy, and his entry, Room 237, would go on to great acclaim. Redford made an appearance and gave an inspiring speech about staying true to your indie roots and making films that no one else makes. Afterward, Rodney and I tried to meet Redford, but every other filmmaker crowded around him and we couldn’t squeeze our way in before he was ushered out.
* * *
As the clock ticked toward midnight we arrived at ground zero of the festival, the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street. I saw a line of people snaking down a flight of stairs on the side of the theater, waiting in the cold. I had the actors with me and figured it might be a nice gesture to say hi, so I led them over and down the stairs. As we descended the steps the folks in line went nuts when they saw Paul, Clancy, and Glynn. Like veteran politicians, the three of them each started pressing the flesh with fans. It was a raucous crowd of a couple hundred festival-goers, and as we worked our way down the line Paul was bumming cigarettes from fans and posing for selfies. Pretty soon a chant erupted: “Paul! Paul! Paul!” I was high as a kite, figuring that with this crowd in attendance, our movie was a surefire bet to play through the roof. We said goodbye to everybody and went inside. Little did I know that the downside to Sundance being the greatest film market in the world was that an audience of industry insiders had already grabbed all the seats inside the theater: none of those hundreds of enthusiastic folks in the standby line ever got into our screening.
Trevor Groth gave John Dies at the End a warm and generous introduction, even including sincere praise for Bubba Ho-tep, and then he brought Paul Giamatti up onstage. I know Paul said some very kind things about me, but I was so nervous about the upcoming screening that I have only a vaguely ephemeral memory of it. It was like my body was there, but my mind was on Mars. I came on after Paul’s introduction and mumbled out a few forgettable words and the screening began.
As I took my seat, the first thing I noticed was that the theater screen was so tiny in proportion to the size of the theater. The Egyptian dated back to the silent days and was constructed for both vaudeville and movies; consequently screen size was not much of a priority back then. I remember thinking how strange it was that the flagship theater for the festival would be such a poor venue for a visual film.
The film started. The opening scene with our Nazi-tongued zombie played like gangbusters. The audience was laughing with the movie, what a relief! Then I noticed something. Twelve minutes into the movie, a schlubby silhouette stood up from his seat and moved to the aisle. Damn! We had our first walkout. Nothing is more soul-crushing for a filmmaker than having audience members walk out of your screening right in front of you, especially at its world premiere. It turned out to be a fairly significant indie distributor—Bob Weinstein, from what is the now defunct and ignominious Weinstein Company—trundling toward the exit. Despite my nerves, I was absolutely certain of one thing: there was absolutely nothing wrong with the first twelve minutes of my movie. Only a self-absorbed, entitled ass would jump to the head of the ticket line and take a seat from all of those nice folks waiting out in the cold of the standby queue when they knew they probably were only going to stay for a couple minutes.
After the screening I was showered with praise for the film, and though we did receive some solid interest from several important independent distributors, to my disappointment, we did not end up closing a distribution deal up in Park City. John Dies at the End went on to become a film festival favorite, hitting the trifecta of indie filmmaking by receiving invitations to the top three film festivals in the world: Sundance, South by Southwest, and the Toronto International Film Festival. I was gun-shy about personally doing another independent theatrical release like Bubba Ho-tep due to the sheer grunt labor and uncertainty that path requires. Consequently, a few months later, after SXSW, we made a deal with an enthusiastic distributor, Magnolia Pictures, for worldwide release.
Billionaire Mark Cuban owned Magnolia, and part of his entertainment portfolio also included the Landmark theater chain. Magnolia pitched us on what they considered a cutting-edge distribution strategy, which they had named “Ultra Video-on-Demand.” Magnolia’s premium VOD service would premiere John Dies at the End on cable and Internet VOD services at a premium rental price of $9.95, and then thirty days later release it into Landmark theaters across the country. It seemed counterintuitive that a movie could be available on your television thirty days before it was in theaters, but Magnolia professed to have had success with the strategy. This style of release has now fallen out of favor and in retrospect might have been a poor choice by us for our film. In hindsight we probably could have done better with the film by barnstorming an independent release like we did with Bubba Ho-tep. In any case, John Dies at the End did play successfully in theaters all around the country and the film garnered great reviews and a passionate fan base along the way.