How I Got My First Feature Film Made (Part 1): Dead Bodies, Paris Hilton and A Thousand No’s

by Jeff Fisher

With Paul Wesley and Kaley Cuoco on the set of KILLER MOVIE

Sometimes your first feature film gets born out of the most challenging circumstances.

For me, it was February in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 17 degrees below zero. No cell service. No internet. Just me, my dog, howling wind, and an endless parade of locals telling me horrific accidental death stories.

This is how my first feature "Killer Movie" came to be.

THE SCRIPTED DREAM

Even though my short films were a romantic comedy ("Garage Sale") and a musical romantic comedy ("Angels, Baby!"), the first directing jobs I got were in reality television. Shows like "The Real World/Road Rules Challenge," "The Simple Life," and "Big Brother." The truth is, reality TV was an incredible training ground. It taught me to shoot efficiently, to problem-solve on the fly, and to work with minimal resources.

Every time I would wrap a season of a reality show, I would try to "shadow" a scripted show - this very awkward process where you follow a director around on an existing show hoping to convince the showrunners and network to give you a directing slot on a scripted series. I had shadowed on shows like "The O.C." but wasn't having any luck convincing anyone that my directing skills would transfer from my short films or reality TV experience.

Reality TV was the red-headed stepchild of television, and I was making zero headway getting one of those scripted directing gigs.

PARIS & NICOLE

I had just finished Season 3 of "The Simple Life," --a show I genuinely loved working on --and Fox got a new network president. We were waiting for the pickup of Season 4, but there was a problem: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were not speaking to each other and wanted to shoot their scenes separately.  (They eventually patched things up—but at this point…it was no bueno.)

Unfortunately, the new network chief didn't go for that idea after we shot a test with them seperately and a family of Orthodox Jews in the valley. The show got cancelled.

Beacuse I had been holding out hope for a few months (when it seemed like Season 4 was going forward) I now needed to get the next job I could get my hands on ASAP. It ended up being a show for the Sundance Channel that was shooting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - in February!

I needed a job, so the only question I really asked was "Can I bring my dog?" I took the job only to find out I was like the fourth director that had been hired in the past four weeks. They had burned through three before I got there.

One of my favorite pics of Paris and Nicole from THE SIMPLE LIFE. The secret sauce of this show: these two ladies knew funny.

WELCOME TO HORROR MOVIE CENTRAL

The weather was brutal. It was 17 degrees BELOW zero when I got there. I grew up in Florida and was living in California. To say the weather kicked my ass was an understatement.

The wind in the UP in winter would howl at night, and I would lay awake in the remote cabin I was housed in thinking of every horror movie I saw as a kid.

To add to it, the people in this small town didn't trust the reality TV crew at all, and many of them seemed to have stories of how someone they knew died a horrific accidental death.

For example, I'd meet a guy with a five-year-old and get a story like: "This is my nephew, Billy. Billy's Dad's Carhartt jacket got caught in the rotary saw up at the mill. We found him decapitated after lunch. Billy lives with us now." Um, WHAT?

Meanwhile, Billy was more of a man at five than I was at 35. I think the kid was literally fixing a snowmobile with a wrench as his uncle was telling the story.

I kept thinking: I have to get out of here and move past directing reality TV. I was grateful for the work, but I knew scripted narrative storytelling was where I wanted to be.

There was no cell service and no internet where I was staying, so I would call my cell phone from the landline and leave messages about these crazy stories on my voicemail.

Having followed Paris Hilton around for the past years on "The Simple Life," I couldn't help thinking: what would it be like to add Paris to this mix?  One thing I learned on “The Simple Life” was that Paris and Nicole knew FUNNY.  At least it would add some levity to this icy situation.

Me on set in the Upper Peninsula. I think I was looking for our sound guy, who I was hoping didn't get lost at the Predator Round Up. We were shooting the cast Ice Fishing on the frozen lake behind me.

THE PIVOT

I finished the job. It was brutal weather and I was completely out of my element - but I didn't quit. And some of those townspeople were really salt-of-the-earth types once I got to know them (preferably inside, not while Ice Fishing).

Meanwhile, I had been trying to get a feature made from a rom-com script I had written and wasn't having much luck.

But the box office was having a horror movie boom - remakes of "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" along with the "Saw" movies were having giant opening weekends.

I decided to try writing a "Scream" wannabe horror movie about a reality TV crew that gets trapped in a northern town with a masked killer on the loose. Hey, I might as well mine those sleepless nights for a good piece of fiction. I also added a blonde starlet character ("Blanca Champion") to the mix.

Personally, I like my horror with a bit of camp, so... bingo.

Determined to make the transition to scripted, I gave myself a deadline for the script of three months. I had booked a job directing a show for MTV with Jennifer Lopez called "DanceLife." Every morning before that 7am crew call, I'd wake up two hours early to write pages of the script, which I was calling "Dead of Winter."

THE BUSINESS PLAN

The first thing I did was reach out to one of my best friends from college who was doing really well in his Wall Street job. He told me I needed a business plan. I asked him to please explain to me what a business plan was. Doh! He was very patient and talked me through it.

He said it was a high-risk investment, so it had to be a high-percentage return. He helped me figure out the language, then I had to go find the investors.

I was starting to wish I got an MBA instead of taking classes in French New Wave Cinema.  I was hearing “Strike Point” and “ROI” way more than any references to “The 400 Blows.”

I was extremely grateful when that friend - along with two of HIS friends from Wall Street - ended up being the first money in.

But the deal was that ZERO of the money could be touched until the entire budget of the movie was raised.

I found an entertainment lawyer with indie movie experience to help me make sure everything was papered and fair, and somehow convinced my great friend Cornelia Ryan Taylor (who had produced "Angels, Baby!" and another short with me) to come on board as a producer.

Then I had to set up trying to find the rest of the money.

A THOUSAND NO'S

That led me on a road of what felt like (and probably was) a thousand "No's."

It was starting to land that my path forward was asking people for money! Who wants to do that? YIKES! I just wanted to make this movie.

The selling point was that these types of movies were hitting big at the box office. I had lucked out - my friends from my short films had started working on big studio features - and were still willing to work with me at our lower budget. We wanted to make a movie for less that looked like 10X its cost.

Plus, in 2007, people didn't really know (or maybe even care) how the sausage was made on a reality TV show, so I was offering up a fresh and authentic perspective with this script. Hey, I was selling!

The reality was I'd have to finish shooting a 12-hour day on a reality show, then drive to a karaoke bar in the Valley to meet the son of a dentist who wanted to be an actor whose Dad was maybe interested in investing in a movie.

It was, honestly, pretty exhausting - but I was determined.

It was kind of an endless medley of "Thanks but no thanks" with the follow-up question of "Do you know anyone who might be interested?" and connecting those dots.

THE BRIDGE LOAN AND THE TICKING CLOCK

I also found a company that liked the script and said if I was able to raise half the budget (which was about $750,000—the budget was sitting at $1.5M), they would finance the rest with a bridge loan and some pre-sales.

So I had the goal.

Our plan was to shoot in Minneapolis, which had an early production incentive (that would pay for post-production entirely) and had the weather to shoot "Dead of Winter." But we'd have to be shooting by April at the latest to catch the snow - preferably earlier.

So we had a ticking clock.

I remember the last big meeting I had that got a "No." It felt like it was over and we were just going to have to return any of the money we raised.  There didn’t seem to be any other options.

When at the last minute, this great guy - a venture capitalist from Northern California - got the script and actually said YES.

His investment meant we could move forward. He also agreed to release a small amount of money so we could start casting the movie and hire a location scout in Minnesota so we could try and get there in time for the snow. 

Paul Wesley as JAKE in KILLER MOVIE. I might have had the same expression on my face when I'd get another "NO" from a potential investor.

THE CAST OF MY DREAMS (BEFORE THEY WERE STARS)

Casting had always been a huge passion of mine. I interned for a casting director and was a casting assistant for Mary Jo Slater before I started working at ICM. I worked on movies like "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and knew that casting could make or break a movie.

It was both terrifying and exciting to hear the script come to life with actors auditioning the material.

When talented Paul Wesley came in for Jake (the lead, a reality TV director who just went through a very public breakup), he was the immediate front-runner. He was it.

And when Kaley Cuoco came in to read for Blanca Champion with her awesome comic timing, I knew that was it too. She had been someone we talked about early on - she had it all: the talent, the looks, the self-awareness. Then we got Leighton Meester for the role of Jaynie. While we were in prep, Leighton booked a pilot for show called GOSSIP GIRL.

I was beyond psyched when my friend Nestor Carbonell (who was in my short Garage Sale and would go on to win an Emmy for his work in FX's Shogun) agreed to come and play Jake’s agent Seaton Brookstone.

In fact, we found actors we were excited about for all the roles! Torrey DeVitto for Phoebe, Robert Buckley for Nik, Al Santos (who I wrote the role for based on his show "Grosse Pointe") as Luke, Gloria Votsis for Keir - Jason London, Adriana DeMeo, Andy Fischer-Price, Cyia Batten and Hal B. Klein were all awesome and in the mix.

UM. YOU WANT WHO TO PLAY WHAT?

It was around this time we got the last piece of financing transferred, and the company giving the other half of the money FINALLY gave their casting list.

They wanted Udo Kier, Keith Carradine, and Dominique Swain for Blanca - she had recently played Lolita in the remake of that film. I wasn't really feeling her for this part.

I was scratching my head. The only parts that were right for Udo Kier and Keith Carradine were the two rival coaches in the story - and they weren't huge parts.

But if that's who they wanted, fine.

The thing is - they didn't want them for the coaches. They wanted them to play the 25-year-old leads. These guys were in their mid to late 50s at the time.

No offense to these great actors, but they just didn't make sense for this movie.

I called some friends who worked at the movie studios, and they told me this: The star of these kinds of horror movies was the GENRE. They told me the best bet was to put the best actors I could find for that role in the role - not people that might just work for pre-sales in certain territories if they weren't right for these particular parts.

I made a bold move.

I cut the auditions for the best actors together and sent their auditions to the existing investors, along with what I heard from the marketing executives at the studio.

I couldn't believe it, but it paid off. The existing investors agreed to up their investment to take the production company with the bridge loan and gap financing out of the picture.

Gloria Votsis, Robert Buckley, Paul Wesley, Kaley Cuoco, Me, Steve Brooksbank (our talented Casting Director), Alan Steinman (our First AD), Hal B. Klein, Michael S and Cornelia Ryan Taylor at our table read for KILLER MOVIE.

MINNESTOTA

I was over the moon when Paul Wesley, Kaley Cuoco, and Leighton Meester's deals closed. Honestly, I was so psyched with ALL of the cast! We had a read-through of the movie with the LA based actors before heading off to Minnesota.

The only problem was... the snow was gone.

So "Dead of Winter" would need a new name.

Now the only thing I had to prove was that I could helm a full feature - something bigger than a short film and very different from episodes of reality television.

It was starting to feel like I was parallel parking one of those giant cruise ships.

I needed to believe I could do it. Easier said than done.

What I Learned (So Far):

→ Desperation breeds creativity. That freezing cabin in Michigan's UP became the birthplace of my first feature.

→ The "No's" are part of the process. A thousand rejections aren't a sign you should quit - they're the price of admission for getting to "yes."

→ Protect your vision, even if it means firing your own financiers. When the company wanted to cast 55-year-olds as 25-year-olds, I could have caved. Instead, I went back to my existing investors with the truth. It paid off.

→ Cast actors you believe in, not names that look good on paper. Paul Wesley and Kaley Cuoco weren't household names yet, but they were PERFECT for these roles. Trust your instincts.

→ Sometimes you have to take the job that pays the bills to fund the dream. Those karaoke bar meetings in the Valley after 12-hour reality TV days? That was the grind. That's what it takes.

Next week: How we survived production

Stay tuned for Part 2.

If you'd like to watch KILLER MOVIE on me, click here: https://vimeo.com/572687380?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Jeff Fisher is a director and writer whose credits include Paramount Pictures' "The Stranger in My Home" and "The Image of You," Hallmark's highest-rated film of the year "My Christmas Love," and reality hits spanning from "The Simple Life" to "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." Visit www.jefffisherdirector.com to see his work and www.reeltalkwithjeff.com for more industry insights. @jefffisher_insta

The POSTER for the DIRECTOR'S CUT of KILLER MOVIE.

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