JUNE, 2007 UPDATE: Writing this book is a slow, painstaking process that is driving me crazy, and I love every minute of it. With the first month of work officially done, I’ve written about 9,000 words or so; when you add that to the 14,000 I’d already written prior to signing the deal, it’s a great start on a book that is contractually required to be no more than 85,000 words.
Of course, people don’t buy a book based on word-count; they buy it ’cause there’s something interesting in it that they wanna read. Well, if you like fan films, comics, sci-fi or history, you’re gonna dig Homemade Hollywood; in the last month, I’ve interviewed people like Sandy Collora (Batman: Dead End; World’s Finest); Kevin Rubio (Troops and the upcoming Star Wars CGI TV series); Don Glut (TV writer for He-Man, Transformers, Land of the Lost, film director, and author of the Empire Strikes Back novel); Cris and Cort Macht (The Force Among Us); Bruce Cardozo (Spider-Man Vs. Kraven from 1974); and Michael Wiese (producer of Hardware Wars). Throw in hours of research on top of that, and you have a pretty hardcore month of hard work. It’s a lot of fun to write, though, and I’d enjoy talking with these folks even if it wasn’t for a book. Ironically, because I’m writing it, I’m the first person to legally make money from fan films!
Nice job, old chum! If there’s anyone who can make money enjoying himself, it’s you. Lunch Thursday or Friday?
Actually, there are plenty of people who’ve legally made money from fanfilms – “Hardware Wars” has been commerically available for a long time, as have films like “George Lucas in Love” and “Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind”… and, all of the filmmakers in the official Lucasfilm/Atomfilms contest are paid royalties as well…
I was being fatuous, but yeah, you’re right.