Thanks Leo! That review really brought a lot of interest to the film. The DVDs will be sent out very soon. I hope you enjoy it as much as Peter Hall did!

Hi Phil, I know you are saving up for your next film and I wish you the best of luck with it. Contrary to what you may think, SLCToo is much more stylized than Stuck Like Chuck. I appreciate your feedback though and agree that the pitch video may not have looked amazing. I do feel story is key in indie film and think most people would agree so. You can have a great film based mostly on dialogue with completely shit visuals. You can also have a film that looks amazing but is a total piece of shit. (cough, Avatar) Having said that, I don’t think my visuals are shit. The cinematography in Stuck Like Chuck is nothing spectacular but there are a few shots I am very proud of and receive many compliments for. Have you ever seen a mumblecore film? In my opinion, those are some of the worst looking movies you will ever see with some of the worst editing ever yet some people absolutely love them and praise their simplicity. As for the acting, the only terrible acting in the film is my cameo. Joe, Patrick and Jocelyn are all fantastic actors that routinely receive praise, even from people who don’t like the film. I respect your opinion though and appreciate the feedback.

Kal, thank you for your contribution and for wanting to help out indies. I’ll have to thank Peter again for such an amazing review. You mentioned wanting to see a new story and not a sequel and that is what Stuck Like Chuck Too is. As I said in my response to Tough Love, that title really did hurt us. Stuck Like Chuck Too is a brand new story with all new characters. It is about a filmmaker named Jerry at the Orlando Film Festival, with the cast of his film Stuck Like Chuck, as they promote the premiere of their film while dealing with pretentious filmmakers, an annoying cop and shady studio executives. Jerry also struggles with how to express his romantic feelings for his lead actress, which makes him Stuck Like Chuck TOO because that is the same theme of Stuck Like Chuck. It is a stylized and fictional retelling of my own experiences on the festival circuit. It is not a traditional sequel in any way, although the two are connected. I often compare it to how Curb Your Enthusiasm treated Seinfeld. Thank you again for your contribution and I hope that you enjoy Stuck Like Chuck. Would love to hear what you think of it!

Nathan, I caught that bit of irony myself. Do you mean you would have contributed right away out of pity or after our multiple conversations on Facebook? Thanks for giving your opinion of crowd-funding from an audience perspective. It is certainly something to consider and a lot of non-film friends and family seemed to be just as confused as you were.

Socialcartographer, I am right there with you. Completely understand. If you had money, is there anything else that would have held you back?

Gary, thank you for your contribution and for wanting to support it more. You came in at the very end so I really appreciate you putting your faith in me and my film with so little time left.

4. I am extremely confident in myself and in this film. The only thing I started to lack confidence in towards the end was crowd-funding. While crowd-funding is an amazing tool, I am starting to think it is not for everything. There are not many comedy films on IndieGoGo or Kickstarter and most of the ones out there have crashed & burned, Perhaps humor is just too subjective and people cannot trust a comedy until they have seen some clips or trailers?

I do not feel “I’d love to hear what you think” shows any lack of confidence. If anything, it shows that I care about audience feedback and am interested in what they think. And I do not know how I come across, which is why I asked. Everyone will look at me differently based on his or her own opinions. For instance, I am appreciative of your feedback and wish I could have done more to change your opinion but respect that is how you feel. Others will just call you a total asshole. Everyone has their own perspective. It is important to ask the audience every once and a while because they keep you in check. I had no idea that a simple joke tweet while cleaning my closet would lead into an entire blog that is still talked about weeks later. Feedback from the audience is extremely important. Maybe it seems like a lack of confidence because not enough people ask?

5. As for the title, I will absolutely give you that one. It has caused more confusion than anything with this campaign. I assumed that if people read the description, they would understand exactly what I meant. It was not the case. While I love the title and still don’t want to change it, I most likely will. I just have yet to come up with a suitable replacement. Also, I did not want to change the title in the middle of the campaign because I know that would have caused even more confusion. I did write a blog post about why the title is important and how it even comes into play within the story. I even had an entire marketing campaign already built around it. I hoped that the blog could clear up confusion until the IndieGoGo deadline but it did not seem to help at all. Quite a few people have told me to keep the title, including film consultant Bob Hawk, but it almost definitely will be changed soon.

6. The story has to be fleshed out? The tagline and description on the IndieGoGo page talk about many of the obstacles he must overcome and I’ve tweeted or posted on Facebook about them all as well. The film is about a filmmaker who deals with the struggle to promote his film while dealing with pretentious filmmakers, shady studio execs, a hot-tempered cop and fear of selling out. This is all on top of him trying to find a way to express his romantic feeling for his lead actress. My blog post about the title of the film goes even deeper and dives into the themes of the film as well because the themes showed why the title was important. I even went further and mentioned “the pains of improper use of duct-tape” but many people said they didn’t understand. I removed it but it plays a big role in the film as well. As I’ve said before, I even have the first 18 pages of this script in the IndieGoGo gallery for anyone to read. I never just said I’m making a movie about a filmmaker going to a festival so give to me.

7. Totally understand and it is still the number one response I get. If I were not working on this project, I would only have enough for maybe one or two projects every couple of months.

I know you were not trying to be mean and I really appreciate the time you took to write your thoughts. Please know that my responses were not meant to be defensive but were simply meant to show my point of view. Obviously there were many people who agree with you.

3. I do often self-promote on Twitter but I also try to engage a lot. I like to think I send out useful tweets as well. While writing the script, I would often tweet writing tips and even talked about what music I listened to while writing (mostly Motion City Soundtrack). I often tweet questions about the campaign or ask about films in general. Loosely related to my film (but without any links), I asked people if they knew of movies about film festivals. Answer: not many and none at all like mine. I obviously did balance them out somewhat because I have met many amazing people through this campaign on Twitter and have since become good friends with them. As for my promotional tweets, I never simply tweeted out a link and said look at this. I always tried to add some humor or heart to it to give people a compelling reason why they should click the link. Many of my tweets are often conversations between fellow filmmakers and myself and I always tried to RT a friend’s projects or interesting articles as well.

However, I did not engage with my audience as much as I wanted to. There would be nights were I would send out 20-30 tweets hoping to strike up a conversation or jump in on an interesting one but would never receive a response. These were not linked promotional tweets but tweets asking or talking about movies, equipment, festivals, work, music and more. Towards the end of the campaign, I saw a huge drop in responses. When I tweeted about legendary film consultant Bob Hawk coming on board, one of the only people to respond was Edward Burns congratulating me.

The mention of selling my comics was a thinly veiled reference to Kevin Smith. I own a small collection of comics, which were given mostly as gifts. I was never big on comics so selling them is nothing. I even mentioned how I was cleaning my room and found all this stuff that I didn’t need so I figured I’d sell it. One person said that seemed desperate so I decided to take to my blog to see if other felt the same. I received a few tweets, messages and comments. Most said it just showed that I was determined. It was never meant to be a reason why people should give. If anything, it was meant to show people that even if we didn’t reach the goal, I would stop at nothing to get this film made. But even that is pushing it since it was just something I decided to tweet out (as reference to k. smith) while I was cleaning my closet.

I’m sorry if this blog post itself seems self-important but feel free to consider me a selfish asshole for wanting to see what I did wrong to learn from my mistakes and hopefully warn others who are also crowd-funding. And yes, I kind of did expect people to contribute because I felt I had a good project and have received mostly praise for it during the entire campaign. As for not reaching enough people, we actually had more hits than most projects on IndieGoGo. We’ve had nearly 22,000 hits on the campaign. My friend’s extremely successful campaign, which far exceeded its goal and was started 2 months before mine, was closer to 15,000 hits when his ended. If everyone gave just $1 when they visited my page, I would have far exceeded my goal. To me, that means the problem lies with either my project or myself. That is why I am asking to find out what I did wrong.

Yes, I wish I could have started with a larger fan base but a large part of crowd-funding is audience building. There are films with hundred thousand dollar budgets that try to crowd-fund a few grand just for that audience building. By the end of the campaign, I have amassed a few hundred more emails of fans or people at least interested. I definitely wish I had built a larger fan base but I am extremely appreciative of the fans that I do have because they have been extremely dedicated and loyal. Tweeps like @waterholemovie and @mojave44 were constantly there to help promote the project and talk with me throughout the entire campaign.

Tough Love. First I want to say thank you for taking the time to write such a long and thorough critique of my entire campaign. I do agree with some of your points but there are a few things that I think you completely missed. However, no matter how I respond, that will not change the fact that this was your reaction to my campaign. The question is, how many others felt the same way?

1. I really thought people would connect with a completely original film that was to be created in a fairly unique way about a mainstream event that’s rarely seen in films. In addition to that, there is much more after that sentence on the Why Contribute? page that tells people how the film relates to them and why it is important. I also recently released a blog called Selling Points, which lists almost 30 reasons. Many people have shown strong interest in getting this film made. I have received at least 50 messages from people saying they can’t contribute but they want to offer their services or equipment for free for the production. I kept people involved throughout the process talking about the script and some ideas for casting and I planned on taking everyone on that journey throughout the entire production. I even had 18 pages of the script posted so people could read it to decide if they wanted to see that film. Unfortunately, most people did not even check it out. In personal messages, I tailored the why to fit who I was sending the message to. Such as when I emailed members of the Orlando Film Festival mailing list, I explained how filming at the festival will make the festival the first of its kind to offer a movie screening, party with the cast/crew and chance to be in another film, all for free. I also explained how the film would help showcase the Orlando indie film scene, which is huge but many don’t know about it. I also offer people the chance to be extras in the film and hang out on set for any contribution at all. Most crowd-funding campaigns don’t offer that for under $100+. Having said all that, obviously there are many people who feel the same way as you. I did mention numerous times why this film needs to get made but I guess all the reasons why just were not enough.

2. Most people I talked with loved our perk levels and descriptions. I didn’t want to be boring so I decided to have some fun with them. Maybe too much fun but I think you have to be very sensitive to get so offended by them. The “cheap bastard” is obviously a joke and also makes fun of Lloyd Kaufman, who is in the film. Most people who know of him know that he is considered a cheap bastard and he even jokes about it himself. Being an indie filmmaker, I see no problem with being called a cheap bastard but that’s just me. I do see how others could be offended by this but many have told me they thought it was funny.

You took 2 lines out of context for the Kiefer Sutherland perk level. “You may not get a lot but you can certainly do some damage” and “You’ll have to take some time out of your busy schedule…” both refer to the TV show 24 and the first line of Kiefer being a modern day MacGyver. They are part of the joke description, which again is meant to stand out and keep things light. As for the “bootleg”, it is actually the “official bootleg” DVD. Notice the comical contradiction? It even says Official which are pretty “official sounding” in my opinion. The DVDs are not low quality, they are in fact exclusive collectables like you said I should offer. Each “Official Bootleg” DVD comes with tons of bonus features and are signed/numbered. Some of these bonus features will not even be on the retail ready DVD coming out in a few months. I’ve talked numerous times about them and even posted covers in the IndieGoGo gallery. I did not mention they are high quality versions of the film but I really didn’t think I’d have to.

Again, with the next perk you took a line out of context; “Thank you for donating the FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAH! that the crazy Asian guy gave you for your Bubble Boy wedding” refers to the film BUBBLE BOY. The perk level is the Jake Gyllenhaal level and he was the star of Bubble Boy, in which a crazy Asian man who yells “FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAH” gives Jake’s character $500 in the film. You may not have seen the film or the wildly popular Youtube clip of that scene but I am still referencing a movie. I guess if people did not know that or misread the line, they could take some offense but it was not an attempt to squeeze racism into the perks.

Gary Busey is batshit crazy. $1,000 = Gary Busey. It is a joke. Can’t really argue it. I’ve received a ton of compliments on that one and it is my favorite of the perk levels. Also, everyone in this industry is crazy.

Thank you for the feedback so far everyone. I will address every comment, as well as any future comments, later tonight or early tomorrow. I have an unusually full schedule today. First, I’m off to work and then a trip to Red Bank for Kevin Smith’s 40th Birthday Q & A. One of the amazing contributors of SLCToo invited me because he had a spare ticket & saw how much of a Kevin Smith fan I am. Really looking forward to meeting him offline and talking with him about this film! (The contributor, not Kevin Smith, although talking with him would be just as exciting!)