17 year old directs $2.7 million grossing film

drc

drc

I found this really interesting.

Matty Rich, from Brooklyn, finished writing his screenplay when he was 17 and finished his movie by the time he was 19. He raised money for the film by maxing out credit cards and getting donations. He raised $77,000 by going on a NYC radio station and asking for donations for his film. The film went on to win Special Jury Selection at the Sundance Film Festival and grossed $2.7 million. Pretty interesting and inspiring stuff.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Out_of_Brooklyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matty_Rich
 
He's a filmmaking genius I guess. When I was in high school a student made a short film that won a prize at a film festival. Makes you wonder how the film festivals rate a movie, or some teens are just that talented, at such an early age.
 
Wow, but unfortunately it looks as if this success didn't parlay into anything more than a limited writing stint on Oprah.
 
He was able to raise the funds because he was 17 and people thought wow a kid that is talented lets help him out. I think it it was a person that was older they probably would not get an radio interview and people would not help out as much with donations. But wow it is cool to see that the kid did good. How could a kid that is 17 get credit cards to max out unless they were his parnets?
 
bird said:
Wow, but unfortunately it looks as if this success didn't parlay into anything more than a limited writing stint on Oprah.
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Yeah I thought the same, after reading this:
Wikipedia said:
Rich had proudly stated that even though he dropped out of New York University's (NYU) famed Tisch School of the Arts after one month (he accused the faculty of racism), he still made a successful film. This drew criticism from Spike Lee, a Tisch graduate, who accused Rich of being "ignorant".[1] Rich's second film, 1994's The Inkwell, received mixed reviews but was a commercial failure. He has not made another film since.
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Maybe his head grew too big to quickly, which is a shame cause the film kinda impressed me for a 19 year old's first feature film as a director.

Here is the trailer

Oh yeah, and grossing $77,000 is not a bad accomplishment either haha :rolleyes:
 
rockerrockstar said:
He was able to raise the funds because he was 17 and people thought wow a kid that is talented lets help him out. I think it it was a person that was older they probably would not get an radio interview and people would not help out as much with donations. But wow it is cool to see that the kid did good. How could a kid that is 17 get credit cards to max out unless they were his parnets?
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Wouldn't it be the opposite though? I would rather help fund a grown up filmmaker rather than a kid. Wouldn't most people think that a 17 year old probably is too ahead of himself at that age? Maybe most people would rather give funding to a 17 year old, rather than an older filmmaker, but I wouldn't think so.
 
harmonica44 said:
Wouldn't it be the opposite though? I would rather help fund a grown up filmmaker rather than a kid. Wouldn't most people think that a 17 year old probably is too ahead of himself at that age? Maybe most people would rather give funding to a 17 year old, rather than an older filmmaker, but I wouldn't think so.
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I guess It's what gets more publicity. A child anything will always get more attention compared to it's adult counterpart. Even if it's short lived attention.
 
Talk about peaking early.

This is exactly the kind of thing that disproves the pernicious indie film lie of making it big easily and quickly. I'm tired of people dragging out examples of directors like Robert Rodriguez and Oren Peli and Stephen Soderbergh, as if every indie filmmaker is going to strike it rich. For every Soderbergh (who is terrifyingly talented), there's another Matty Rich, or there's the "Blair Witch" guys (where are they now, and does anybody care?), or, more to the point, there are another 999 indie filmmakers who've never made it.

If you want to get really depressed and get a hard splash of cold reality, become, as I did for a short while, an indie film festival programmer. You would not believe how many ill-conceived and/or badly made indie features there are. It's staggering. Often these films are very expensive to make -- people mortgage their houses, or rack up huge debt -- and the results are just sad. You almost wish you could have told them in advance of shooting that even a quick glance at their premise was enough to recommend that they shitcan their idea, or that somebody could have warned them that their screenwriting skills were, at best, execrable.

But filmmakers are driven people who are motivated to figure out things by themselves -- which can be both a strength and a weakness -- so it's very hard to tell them anything.
 
I remember Matty Rich and Straight Out of Brooklyn very well. It probably would have done even better box office, except Boyz 'n the Hood came out very soon after and stole his thunder.
 
Often we get kids in the 15 to 17 range who come here complaining
that no one will take them seriously because of their age. Here is an
example of a kid who used his age as a positive thing and succeeded.

Let that be a lesson to you all. If you have a good script and you have
the drive, go out an make a damn movie. I will bet this young filmmaker
did not go to any message board and ask start 100 threads asking "how"
or "why" or "should I". I bet he just did everything he could and made
his damn movie.
 
Cool. So are there any examples of movies made by teens or even adults that failed to be good? We always here of the newbies that struck gold with their first films, but any films famous for not being done well?
 
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directorik said:
Let that be a lesson to you all. If you have a good script and you have
the drive, go out an make a damn movie. I will bet this young filmmaker
did not go to any message board and ask start 100 threads asking "how"
or "why" or "should I". I bet he just did everything he could and made
his damn movie.
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harmonica44 said:
Cool. So are there any examples of movies made by teens or even adults that failed to be good? We always here of the newbies that struck gold with their first films, but any films famous for not being done well?
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:rofl: Lesson apparently not learned :rofl:
 
harmonica44 said:
Cool. So are there any examples of movies made by teens or even adults that failed to be good? We always here of the newbies that struck gold with their first films, but any films famous for not being done well?
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Lol yea, all media outlets are always on the search for the next 16 year old who filmed his friends acting but no one saw the film but him and his friends. I bet the readers of newspapers, magazines, and news websites are all dying to hear about that story. It makes great news.
 
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I would imagine just like there are many examples of very poor films being made by people of all ages, there are also a huge number of poor films made by 16 or 17 year olds. Admittedly, I can't imagine many of them got nearly half a million in funding (not why Rich succeeded, just saying it seems unlikely)
 
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