Wait, you're making a feature film?

What's the film about?

How to Follow Strangers is based on two ideas.  The first idea is inspired by a true story of a woman who died in her Manhattan apartment and it took people a year (!) to find her body decomposing in a crisp Chanel suit. One of the main characters in HTFS, a young man named Casey becomes so obsessed with this urban tragedy that he fakes his own disappearance, wondering if anyone will notice.  Ellie, a young woman who sees him everyday as part of her regular commute actually does notice that he goes missing, and when he resurfaces, she starts to follow him.

The second idea, the following one, is inspired by Sophie Calle, one of my favorite artists.  Her first project was this series of photos she did about following strangers.  When she was all of 26, she moved back home to Paris without any real idea of what she wanted to do with her life and as a way to give her days structure she’d follow people to see what “real” humans got into.  In the process she would photograph them and document what they did.  Pretty crazy/amazing.

When I was in college I had a crush on a girl (actually I had crushes on many girls) but there was this one girl in particular who would walk around wearing all white, hurriedly scurrying to and from the all access video lab.  She was maybe the whitest woman I’ve ever seen.  That’s irrelevant to the story, save for that she became a yogi and then a rapper.  Obama! Anyway, one day we were in the lab making small talk and I asked her what she was working on.  She told me she was making a video following people.  Which I found really creepy.  I mean, it is creepy, we can all agree on that.  But it is also super fascinating to me, this idea of wanting to connect to the strangers who surround you.  And also to imagine a world where people actually care, and are actually looking at you.

Who's in it?

Ilana Glazer (“Ellie”)

Ilana Glazer is the co-creator/star of the cult web series, Broad City, with her partner, Abbi Jacobson.  Broad City is currently being adapted for television with Amy Poehler (star of NBC’s Parks and Recreation/Saturday Night Live) serving as Executive Producer along with Dave Becky (Executive Producer of HBO’s Bored to Death and FX’s Louie).

This past year Ms. Glazer was nominated by ECNY (Excellence in Comedy in New York) for Best Emerging Comic.  She’s been a featured comedian in Time Out New York, and has also had write ups in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Fader, and The Huffington Post.  She's pretty amazing.

Will it be good?

Heck yeah!  It's currently a finalist for the SFFS Hearst Screenwriting Grant, and has an amazing crew behind it.  We're talking about a director who's directed films starring Steve Buscemi, Gina Gershon and Kieran Culkin, in addition to a tour documentary about the band TV on the Radio, a producer who's made projects for Jansport, General Electric and Google (yeah, that Google), and an amazing cast assembled by the same casting director Doug Liman (Swingers, Bourne Identity) and Tamra Davis (Billy Madison, Half Baked) use! 

How can I help make it?

• Good question!  The goal of this campaign is to raise $17,000.  The money is going to the production budget for the film: props, crew, equipment, which will supplement the funds already raised.
  
• The campaign has a hard deadline of 11:59pm on November 21st, as we are about to start principle photography and need an addition 17K to wrap production.  
  
• If you decide to help, you pledge whatever you want in exchange for cool rewards (for example, high fives, DVD of the film when it's done, passes to the premiere, your name in the credits...the list goes on!).
  
• The more you pledge, the better the rewards! Take a look at the column on the right to see what's available.
  
• If I make the goal by the deadline, your credit card is charged what you pledged (but not until then). I get to make the movie, you get your rewards, and everyone's happy. I'd be more than happy, obviously -- I'll be more ecstatic than I've ever been in my life, and hopefully you'll feel good too.
  
• If I don't make the goal by the deadline (falling even a penny short), your credit card is not charged, and the film gets nothing.  Which is sort of a bummer when you think about how great it's gonna be!