I think you're being too hard on him and yourself.
Oh, I'm not being hard on him. I'm really glad he said it. But, still, because I am worried about the
role of the media, I cannot lift myself out as some kind of elitist who's somehow found the eternal secret of being the perfect researcher and the perfect complex filmmaker, who's removed from this. I'm not. I'm right in the middle of it.
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Part 2
Many people would say it's madness for you to think you can complete this new project [what was to become
]. I know of no film that has been substantially funded by the donations of individuals in various countries.
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Well, nobody has actually said, yet, that such a thing is madness. And I don't see it as madness at allquite the contrary. It is
we've gotten used to the media being so damned centralized that we think of such a project as unusual. You can find many aspects of the social process where the public should be involved but aren't. But here's a clear example where receivers are almost completely uninvolved in the creation of what they are receiving. It's fantastically off-balance. What I'm doing should be quite normal, as far as the process is concerned.
I'm quite sure the film will get done. It may be that for one reason or another I won't be able to shoot the film in all the countries I hope to, but I don't think that will be for financial reasons. It may be because this country or that makes it too bureaucratic for me to function.
How exactly are you raising money?
I'm building up a several-tier process. In some countries we've applied for public funds. In France, for example, we're applying for a national grant, though the support for the film there is coming from the Midi- Pyrenees: Regional Film: Production Center in the south of France. I've applied for funds to cover the cost of the equipment and filming. But a local regional board has said that even if I don't get the grant, they will lend me the equipment for nothing. Wherever I can, I'm trying to cover my bets, so that if we get less than full funding, I'll have emergency plans to fall back on.
How much are you trying to raise?
If you add up the target allocations I've set for each country, it comes to nearly five hundred thousand dollars, but I have a safety margin built in. Even if you were trying to raise money in just this country over the next year from public and cultural funds, five hundred thousand dollars would not be impossible. We're trying to raise it in countries all over the world.
What's your goal for the two U.S. episodes you plan to shoot?
About a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a bit more than a third of the budget. Another third will be coming from Sweden: the Swedes are trying to raise about a million crowns [approximately $150,000]. The other third will be raised elsewhere, in eight countries or so. In Sweden we've applied for two main grants. The National Film Board of Canada has offered to provide me with stock and costs, which I think means stock and equipment. But even if it means stock, that will be very helpful.
But, even should you get some of the grants, much of the money will still come from individuals and groups in the various countries trying to raise money on their own?
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Yes, the public process. A large amount of money will come from that.
When you were in this country in spring of 1983 you spent some time trying to get money from Hollywood, from Canadian commercial TV, and other commercial sources. But I had a sense even then that part of you wanted to generate funds on a more local basis, on principle.
That's right. I wasn't ambivalent about the principle at all, but at that point I was concerned about the practice. It takes a long time to raise money. You can't be quite sure, until you're underway and really rolling, how people will respond to a particular project. It's a very special and individual chemistry, dependent on the time you're in, on the nature of the subject, on so many things. I tried to raise money publicly in England last year when I wanted to remake
. That project was stopped by Central Television. We had started the public fund-raising there, though I'm not sure if it's fair to judge the results or not. At the time the project was stopped, we had raised around thirty-five thousand dollars. That was a national appeal concentrating mostly on England, but it went on for only about two months, and I think it tended to peter out once people thought that Central Television was paying for the film. So it's hard to say whether that rather small amount of money was a warning or not, but it did show me that the process could take a tremendous amount of time. We were trying to find several hundred thousand dollars.
