FILM INTERVIEW: MALI ELFMAN
'Do Not Disturb' - Making & Selling a First Film: How She Did It!
Like you, she had a dream. And the dream became an idea. And with no more than gut courage and determination, her edgy and imaginative and delightfully eerie first film, Do Not Disturb, is now available on Netflix! And Amazon Instant and Microsoft X-Box Zune, AT&T U-Verse, Charter Cable, Verizon Fios and coming soon to Apple iTunes! Distribution: Gravitas, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Congrats, Mali!
Do Not Disturb is a unique five stories: five casts, five directors, but all happening behind one closed door in a hotel. What hotel? The one you find somewhere between the twilight zone and hell. You’ve never seen anything like this one. But how can I discuss the film without spoilers? I’ll just say watch out for a lizard’s tongue,a young stud’s liver, and a surprising request to a hooker who thought she knew everything.
I asked Mali how she did it. How she managed to turn a dream into a salable film. What were the steps she took to accomplish this bright new career in the challenging and competitive world of independent film? As well as becoming a new face on the screen, since she stars in one episode? I cornered a wildly busy Mali between meetings, not only promoting her Do Not Disturb but now involved in myriad new projects. I wondered, how did she do it?
I asked her, and she was gracious enough to give me a step-by-step, invaluable advice for young hopefuls fearfully jumping into a tricky business. It was a generous interview -- one not only for kids with a dream, but for those of us who are trying to restart old careers in a completely new world, using new tools and with a new kind of audience.
Clare Elfman: How did you start? What was the germ of the idea?
Mali Elfman: Unlike the usual film that normally starts with a writer sitting in a room writing a screenplay, then finding a producer, a director, and then moving on from there…this was not that project. It started with me being sick and tired of not getting enough done and wanting to do more, and deciding to push myself in a different direction...and taking what I had, which were some ideas for stories and organizing them, and finding directors who I thought could create something unique. The idea for the five directors came out of necessity. I knew I couldn’t get one director on a set for two weeks. I could never afford a full-time crew. Maybe I could beg, borrow, or steal and get one director for one day. With one crew for one day. And sure enough I was right! That was kind of the way that five different stories came to be. On top of that, I am fascinated with the idea that, when I go to a hotel, I open the door, I bring in my bag, unpack it, I move everything around, and I make this is my room, my space, and if anyone comes in, they are invading my space. This is my property, and 12 hours later, I pack everything up, put it in my suitcase, and I’m gone and it’s somebody else’s. And it’s cleaned by other people, and you do things in the room you’d never do -- like I’d never eat food in bed, but in hotels, I always eat in bed. You leave towels on the floor for someone else to pick up. The general idea of “what do people do when they go behind those closed doors and they have permission to do whatever they want.”
CE: How did you find different directors?
ME: Instead of getting a wish-list of all the directors, I simply looked around me, and looked at people who were either out of work or doing projects that didn’t inspire them -- people who were looking for projects that would push them into new realms, doing things in a different way. The first director to come on board was Jon Mann-Kreiger, my best friend since I was 14. We’ve worked on short little things together. I’m so excited that he got the reaction he wanted, that he’s proven himself. Brandon Nicholas I worked with on another film. He’s younger than I am. He’s inspiring just to be around. He’s quiet but very meticulous, and he knows what he wants. He does what almost nobody else can do. So it was so important that he got the final piece. Laura Henry was my acting teacher and coach for three years. She’s the one who taught me everything I know about acting. I was so nervous about asking her to direct. I’ve been her student for so many years. Petro Papahadjopoulos I’ve known since I was a teenager...or maybe younger! I was so impressed with his video music work and knew he could bring something original to the mix. And then Eric Balfour (Six Feet Under) was the only director I didn’t know. Petro told me he was interested. We had a few e-mails and he got on the phone with me. I was interested in if he understood the concepts, and even though his piece was the most intellectual and convoluted, he got it immediately. He just responded to the material, and I had a great conversation with him and I said, “Let’s go. Let’s make it happen.” He was the first director on the first day. All the nerves, the energy, all the technical problems, and he had everything up and running. He managed to pull off an amazing piece. I was so impressed by him.
CE: Okay, here is the hard question. You had the stories, you had the directors. How did you raise the money?
ME: Again going around and asking people. That’s the way to do it. You will hear far more NOs than you ever hear YESes, and you have to be fine with that. And you hear “no” and say, “But…but…but…” You’ll hear ten NOs before you find another option. We had a fundraiser where we actually raised a majority of the money. We had people donating Pilates classes, people donating a ride to the airport... The film was actually made for $20, $40, $60 donations that I think added up to about seven or eight thousand dollars, which was a huge amount for us. You start where you can start. Do what you can do. You don’t need that one big studio, you don’t need that one big investor… If you love film and you’re determined to make it, start with whatever you can do. Honestly, it’s not just raising money, it’s convincing people to do it for no money…building sets, using locations for almost no money, the crew, food, everything, convincing these people…that's where you want to start -- start with figuring out how you can do without it.
CE: At the beginning, you had the dream, and then you had the reality. What was your major set of problems?
ME: Is it okay if I swear? I went with the oh-fuck-fuck-it technique. Being on a set, making a film is a rollercoaster ride. It will make you look at yourself in a way that you never have -- doubt yourself and question your being on this Earth. It is so crushing at times, but if you love it, if it’s the only thing you can do in your life and be happy, then it’s the only thing that you can do…and only then can it possibly be rewarding. When you have those moments when an actor says a line and it blows you away, or you have this big scene and it goes perfectly, or all of a sudden you figure out a perfect piece of music, or you play it for an audience at USC and they’re laughing at all the right spots, there’s nothing better. It’s hard, it’s painful, it goes up and down, up and down -- that is the ride. I think not letting the ride get to you but seeing it for what it is is dire to independent filmmaking. Not being afraid to fail...which I got from my family and reinforced by Laura Henry in acting school. It is wonderful when 100 people show up and they laugh at your film. But at the end of the day, that’s what it is. Sometimes nobody shows up for your screening, and that’s just what it is. Neither one makes you who you are, it doesn’t make your film better or worse, it doesn’t make your work better or worse -- it is what it is, and that’s part of it -- it’s the ups and down. You have to be in the mindset where all of it is good and fun, because you never know what’s going to happen next. Everything will go wrong -- just get that over with. No matter how much you plan, it will go wrong. Lights will fall down onto your set, people will be late, hard drives will fail -- you just have to keep going. That’s when it actually goes right. It’s wonderful, but you have to take it all in at once…
CE: What were your fantasies at the end of the shooting?
ME: That I’ll be able to shoot something else. All I want is to be back on set. The fact that anyone has taken the time to review it and it has actually been getting positive reviews is just an awesome bonus! It’s so weird, so quirky, and different from anything else, I didn’t know what anyone would think of it. I know I didn’t care when I was making it. It makes me feel so good that people are enjoying it, and that others have reached out to me and said it helped inspire them to make their film. That means the world. My biggest dream, my biggest fantasy is that this film helps me get to the next phase of my career. If it does that, then it’s fulfilled both its purpose and my wildest fantasies.
CE: How did you actually feel at the first showing, when you first saw the finished product?
ME: When I first saw the finished product, it was not actually the finished product. The actual finished product was three days ago. The first time I screened it, I was sweating, my stomach was in knots, I think I kept running up and down to the booth -- something wasn’t right with the sound and I kept trying to fix it manually. It’s wonderful. People pat you on the back and tell you nice things, but I knew I could make it better after the first screening. It’s wonderful, but leaving that screening, all I could think is, “Thank you for coming out, but I know I can do better.” Since then, it’s been reedited a couple of times, color corrections have been made, the music is different, everything got so much tighter, and it also taught me how important all those tiny details are. Three days ago, at USC, I finally saw the FINAL film, and it suddenly came together. At this last screening, it was funny. I was fine, cool as a cucumber the entire day, and then I went to introduce it, I stood up on stage, and complete panic rushed through my body. But once it started and people started to laugh, it just felt so good, and afterward at the Q & A, people were asking great questions. And everybody always comes up to me and they say, "This (segment) was the best," or "That was the best." Everybody has a favorite. They always see them in different ways, and I think that’s just wonderful, and they’re seeing what they want to see because they’re finding beauty in what they love. It’s lovely, and it gives me and my directors a great sense of satisfaction.
CE: Now that it’s made, how did you go about trying to sell it?
ME: I sold the distribution, but I own the rights to the entire film. Gravitas found me. We had been going out to festivals; we won a couple of awards, it was going very nicely, kind of quiet... You have a couple of screenings and it dies down. I was definitely emailing and reaching out to people.
CE: How did you find your sources?
ME: IMDBpro. I went online. I called and called, and most people wouldn’t talk to me. Cold-calls and mainly cold-emails, actually. I just reached out and reached out and heard, “No.” “But...” “No and no no no…” and then Gravitas said, “Can we see it?” And I showed them the film. They said we’re interested in representing it and said, “This is how we work -- we go through Warner Bros. Productions and they have to see everything, but we don’t know if it’s quite for them. It’s such a small-budget production, they have to okay or decline it before they can release it…” Gravitas is great, but they’re a small house; they don’t have the same reach as WB. I got a letter from Warner Bros. that I printed and framed that said they’d like to distribute Do Not Disturb, and then I just like….uhhhhhh! For about an hour, I was elated, and then panic… Immediately, the first request was that they needed 150 DVDs by Monday. This was Friday, and over the weekend, I literally had a DVD burning party, and friends brought over their computers and all of us burned DVDs and drank wine. Every DVD is me or me and Jon who came and saved the day. Then came the edits and notes from WB: “The trailer’s good, but you can’t say ‘anal intercourse’ in the trailer.” To which I, being high and mighty Mali, said, “You can say vaginal intercourse but not anal intercourse?” And then they said, “Now you can’t say either.” So I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. That was a very important lesson. We had to change the trailer. We originally had some music that wasn’t ours; now it's all of our music in the trailer. And then the “deliverables” -- the almighty “deliverables.” There were so many problems that we had to fix, and then six weeks of everybody saying "Congratulations," and I kept thinking, “I don’t know if this is actually going to work or not, oh my god!” Then we just literally finished under the wire and got it in. So to see it on Friday...that was the first time I saw a final cut done by an actual post-production studio.
CE: How do you feel now that you’ve gone from young beginning producer to professional director/producer with a career about to take off?
ME: I just want to keep working. The only thing I can think of is get on to the next project.
CE: So what’s next?
ME: There are a few projects I can talk about. Right now, Mark Danielewski (House of Leaves) wrote a short film that Jon Mann-Krieger and I are making. There are no words in it. It’s a claymation called Morton’s Fork. If we ever finish, it will be incredible. I recently came across a script called Strawberry Fields of Heaven, absolutely amazing, and I’m working on getting Laura Henry attached as director. We’ll get a production company behind that… I finished Addison Clark, which is a screenplay by Christie Ko and myself that I’m madly in love with. It’s so weird and so dark. It’s what I want to stand for as a filmmaker. It’s about a man who gets a letter in the mail from his own body, and everything starts to come true and he has to uncover the conspiracy. It’s weird and wonderful, and as I said, I’m in love. But it looks like there’s another film I’ll be producing with one of the directors of DND… I won’t tell you which one. Literally, we’ll have contracts in the works that I can’t officially announce, but it’s going to be fun and give me a chance to prove myself on a bigger scale.
CE: What advice do you have for young filmmakers who are ambitious and eager and frightened?
ME: Don’t bother being frightened! It’s a waste of time! If you’re frightened, you won’t make it through.
Three things:
1. You have to believe in your project 100% and know that others won’t. Know that this is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. Know, really know that it will be hard, no matter who you are and what you make. You are going to be told that you are nothing, you are going to be told the worst things. People will hate you for making things, and people will attack you because they can. There will be downs, but who the fuck cares? Know who you are and what you stand for, and follow that through 100% and you can’t go wrong.
2. Know that you’re not alone. At USC, we screened the trailer for three other indie films that I’m so impressed with: Desert Son, Absentia, and In the Nest. These are other groups of filmmakers who had nothing, no money, no support, but they followed their hearts and they put in the time and the work, and they have made some amazing films. They went out there and begged and borrowed and scraped, so you’re not alone.
3. Become obsessed with the world -- go to festivals, talk to filmmakers. Make it your life. All of a sudden, you’re not by yourself, you’re not sitting in a room with a script. Suddenly there’s this world around you of people so supportive and loving, and you just have to make yourself a part of it.
CE: Mali, I am so impressed that you had the courage and the guts…
ME: I don’t see it as courage. I see it as…why not? What am I supposed to do, sit around and think about it? The worst thing people can tell me is "no." That’s not that bad! When you get that one "yes," it’s wonderful…and the upside is that you get to go and create. There are people with jobs they hate. We’re privileged to do something that we love. Whether you are on a tiny little budget, or Jerry Bruckheimer or Tim Burton or Gus Van Sant, filmmaking is extraordinarily challenging. If you can do anything else, do it because your life WILL BE easier...if you’ve got the bug and can’t get rid of it…
Mali ended with that. But her message came to me loud and clear. It was a supportive message and invaluable advice, not only to young filmmakers but for writers like me -- older gals whose major screenwriting careers are behind them, and now they try to find the courage to get started again when film is a whole new ballgame. Thanks, Mali, for this generous and important and encouraging piece of info. And best of luck on your next project.
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