Kickstarter

UPDATED - Sept. 9, 2011

Last Day!  We are so appreciative of your support!!!!  Thank you!  Thank you!

Yoga Dork pitched for us this morning on their website, "Help Make 'The Yogi', a Potentially Hilarious Mockumentary Yoga Film."  It's a nice little article.  Thanks Yoga Dork!

And thanks to all who have donated so far.  We're so close we can almost feel nirvana.

The next 4 $100 donators gets the first ever custom The Yogi™ yoga mat along with the DVD and movie credit!

Rafting trip is still in play!  Let's make a deal!  Get some friends together and get that gosh darned rafting trip reward.  It'll be fun!   If you want to talk deals (such as a deposit toward the trip), we'll talk.

Some of you have asked, "Why do we need a Casting Director when Rose and Leonard are so fantastic!"  Tim Orr (Leonard) and Regina Saisi (Rose) are incredible.  They are local SF actors who will someday be famous, but we all agree that we want a couple already famous actors to act with them, because, well, they bring in the bigger money to make a better film.   

If you haven't seen The Yogi™ Video #1, you may want to start here to catch up.

If you haven't seen The Yogi™ Video #2 "Our Big Sundance Snafu", you can see it here:

If you haven't seen The Yogi™ Video #3 "Ice Box Yoga™", you can see it here:

If you haven't seen The Yogi™ Video #4 - "What are they wearing now?", you can see it here: 

The Scoop and Pitch

A 3,000 year-old practice is commodified.  Cool?  Uncomfortable? The American Way?  Well, definitely room for a ton of humor.

Our script, The Yogi™, has been read by folks in the business who have said,  "Hey, you've really got something here."  Our friends, who, like your siblings, are a really tough audience, watched a screening of our work in progress and snorted, "You have to do this.  I guffawed like five times." 

We've watched the complete film a bunch of times in our heads.  We'd like you to see it too.  We've filmed a slice of it to see how it works (clip above) and we are ready to film the rest.

The Kickstarter money is for a retainer for a reputable Casting Director and a cool Yogi™ website with special features.  Casting directors know actors.  Actors are great for movies.  A website is something that folks click on to feel what you're about.  We wanna give folks that good feeling.

Why Make this Movie?

Yoga is having a positive impact on folks.  Our film is yoga-positive but explores the yoga dharma that manifests when you just stole the parking spot outside the studio from the person who is now laying their yoga mat right down next to yours.  Makes you feel ooogy, right?  That's funny to look at.

The Story

Jo, a 30 something black woman, is so taken by yoga, she quits her 70-hour a week corporate job to become a yoga teacher.  Looking to the practice for the spiritual, she instead gets pulled into the commercial realities of her host studio.  In front of a nation-wide audience, she's thrust into the finals of the Yogi™ Yoga Pose World Posing Championships competing for her own Yogi™ co-franchise and must decide how to bring yoga to the masses without becoming the T&A poster child for a Fortune 500, yoga guru who has trademarked his own name.

Jo is one of several representatives from small studios around the country that our mocumentary crew follows as they prepare and compete for a coveted Yogi™ co-franchise (and a thrilling cinematic climax).  They include:

• Ace, the former semi-pro triathlete, now star of his own yoga studio infomercials.
• Linden the free spirited, potty-mouthed, chain-smoking, hippy, and her perpetually stoned, aging-Casanova-boyfriend, Pedro, who teach hula hoop/drumming yoga at music festivals.
• Barbara and Charlyn, who own the “wombyn” friendly Les Yoga studio. 
• Rose and Leonard who pressure cook their way to the competition from Las Vegas, NV, 400 miles away on their tandem one-speed bicycle.

The Eight Fold Path of Buddhist Enlightenment

Borrowing from another Eastern influence, each of our characters is working on a particular step along the Buddhist eight-fold path to enlightenment; right speech, right intention, right mindfulness, etc.  Each character will remind you, and your boyfriend, and your close friends (but not those semi-friends who will be oblivious) of that thing that you do that you're working on, and will always work on, as you try to be the best human ape possible.

Be a part of this fun project!  Stay in contact and be an extra in the film!  You will meet like-minded, fun loving people with a sublime consciousness and a sense of humor.

Thanks!  (and Namaste)