Dâv Kaufman is 34 years old. He lives in the basement of a suburban Minnesota townhome that he shares with his mother. With his long hair, beard and moustache, he looks as though he would be quite at home camping in the wilderness and he is, but that isn't the first thing he'll tell you about himself. "I'm Dâv Kaufman. I'm an independent filmmaker and a novelist," he says.
For the last two-and-a-half years, Mr. Kaufman has been trying to raise the $1.5 million he needs to produce a movie he wrote called . It's the story of a fictional Minnesota town called Desire, whose most beloved resident dies in a boating accident in the first few minutes of the movie. "That sparks off the story and the story then revolves around the magic that's happening after her death in this town as the community bands itself together and copes with this death," he says.
Although Mr. Kaufman may call himself an independent filmmaker, he is anything but alone on this project. has a nine-person film crew and a cast that includes a few TV celebrities, like LA Law's Corbin Bernsen and Darren Burrows, who played Ed Chigliak on the 90's hit show, .
The two actors signed onto the project in 2001, when they met Mr. Kaufman at an independent film festival. At that point, however, the movie was little more than a script and a business plan. In other words, it was missing one key element: money. So Mr. Kaufman's days are not consumed with writing or casting or filming, but with trying to convince people to invest in his movie. "It's just a lot of busy work right now. It's a lot of getting on the phone and talking to as many people as you can fit in during the day of all different things: investors, sponsors, people that are interested to come on as service providers, things like this. And this has been going on every day for three years," he says.
A single share of costs $15,000, and when investors sign on, they are warned that filming won't begin until the entire budget is secured, so it will be years before they see any kind of return on their money.
So much time has passed, in fact, since the Gander Mountain sporting goods chain came onboard that its new Vice President of Marketing doesn't know how the company ever got involved.
But Jeff Bergman says he doesn't worry much about how long it's taking Mr. Kaufman to begin filming . He sees the movie more as a marketing opportunity for Gander Mountain than as an investment that will produce huge profits. "It's really kind of a gamble, from our perspective," he says. "It was an opportunity for us just to say 'what the heck, let's give them a shotput a little bit into it to support them and just to see where it goes.' Are we expecting anything great out of it? I don't think our expectations are high. Our hopes are. It's kind of like betting on the long shot and just saying, 'Let's see what happens.'"
Producer Dav Kaufman says he knew from the start that development, as this first crucial stage of filmmaking is called, could drag on for years. He also knew that it would cost moneymoney for lawyers, money for phone calls, money for printing and independent filmmakers have to eat, too. It is typical for production houses to take out loans to cover these costs, but this is one area where truly differs from other films. Instead taking on debt, the movie's producers came up with something called a VIP kit. "It's a limited edition autographed script with a VIP badge that people can use to get into the sets. They get first call for walk-on roles. They get automatic entry into the sweepstakes. They've been selling like hotcakes," he says.
The VIP kits cost $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a business. Only 1,000 were produced, so, like a limited edition art print, they will be more valuable. The people and companies who purchase them aren't investing in the film, they're simply buying the chance to be an extra or have their products placed prominently on the set.
Craig Rice is impressed with the concept of a VIP Kit. As Executive Director of the Minnesota Film and TV Board, his job is to foster the entertainment industry in the state. He says Mr. Kaufman's business savvy sets him apart from most other independent filmmakers. "I think what David is doing is he's approaching the making of a film as a business. Normally some of that stuff you don't do until the back end. He's sort of created an ancillary market up front to finance the product. I mean the only thing he's missing is like a record, which he could actually do, too, and start using that to finance the film," he says.