POSTER: Michael Stephenson's Destroy

Joshua Ligairi » 06.29.11 »

Michael Paul Stephenson is from my same geographic area and religious background. He's also a documentary filmmaker and we share a lot of common friends both in and out of the entertainment business. Zack Carlson was in Mike's first film, (the hit documentary) Best Worst Movie, of which I am a big fan. Zack also penned a favorite book of mine, Destroy All Movies!!!, which through an odd turn of events, I will be directing a documentary adaptation of.

Those random connections notwithstanding, I'm really looking forward to seeing Destroy, a new film which Mike will direct from Zack's script, as a rabid genre film fan.

The set up is amazing. According to The Hollywood Reporter: "In Destroy, vampires don't exist, but that doesn't stop a well-intentioned would-be vampire hunter from leaving a trail of blood-splattered wooden stakes across Bavaria. While he thinks he's saving the world, he is mistakenly murdering innocent old men." Genius. Add it to the list of films I wish I'd thought of. Report's THR, "Destroy will shoot in Eastern Europe and is in the early stages of casting."

Anyway, this is all old news, but I recently stumbled across this (AMAZING) early artwork for the film online and I got excited about the project all over again. Thought I'd share the poster and my anticipation here. I'm super excited for Mike to be able to make this transition into fictional filmmaking so easily. I'm also excited for Zack to go from film programmer to filmmaker. There is also the chance that this will help out my collaboration with Zack on the Destroy All Movies!!! documentary. If you are at all interested based on the concept of poster, you should also read this nice little interview with Mike and Zack by the great Devin Faraci over at at Badass Digest: http://bit.ly/i1bPFP

BLOG: Early press for Cleanflix

Joshua Ligairi » 9.06.09 »

So, Cleanflix, premieres on Friday, but it's been getting early buzz since we posted the announcement that we would be playing the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

After an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, we were informed that Sean Means, film critic at the Tribune, would be making a special trip to Toronto just to see Cleanflix.

The first filmmaker interview was with Producer Kynan Griffin (Pride & Prejudice, Moving McAllister) at The Examiner. Subsequent filmmaker interviews followed in several print publications. You can listen to our first audio interview on A Damn Movie Podcast (warning, explicit language).

There have been some great blog posts anticipating the film from all over the world from Canada to Mexico. We've also been mentioned as top picks by guest bloggers on the TIFF09 documentary guide including David D'Arcy, programmer of the Haifa International Film Festival in Israel and both David Courier and Basil Tsiokos of the Sundance Film Festival programming staff.

We've also been featured nicely in little blurbs within other articles about TIFF09:

The Hollywood Reporter refers to Cleanflix among "high profile" and "heat seeking" films.

IndieWire features Thom Powers talking us up.

Atlantic City Weekly puts us up there with the big boys.

Variety didn't have much to say, but they said it in Variety!

The Hollywood Reporter announcement includes us in the title.

The Torontoist features only our photo and George A. Romero's photo.

Buzz is weird. Of course, we are excited about all the attention the film has been getting (we haven't even hired a publicist yet), but almost nobody has actually seen the film. It seems that we're just getting great word of mouth from the few people who have seen it. Also, supposedly there is good buzz and bad buzz. You want some buzz, but not too much that you become over-saturated. It is all a bunch of stupid marketing stuff that is totally antithetical to the creative process. I guess it is important if you actually want to make art for a living, though.

All that aside, I'm looking forward to the festival. It is a real honor to be playing at a festival as prestigious as Toronto and we hope this is just the beginning of many wonderful film festival experiences. We're super excited to be screening alongside films from a myriad of talented filmmakers that I have looked up to for years. Not to name drop, but other filmmakers in attendance will be The Coen Brothers, Steven Soderbergh, Geroge Clooney, Chris Smith, Todd Solondz, Michael Moore, and Werner Herzog, and George A. Romero--to name just a few. The whole thing would be pretty over-whelming if the reality of it would actually sink in.

If you are interested in tracking the progress of the film, you can become a fan of Cleanflix at Facebook or join us on our struggling MySpace page. Cleanflix poster design by Natty Coleman of Worker's State.

BLOG: Blame Canada!

Joshua Ligairi » 07.21.09 »

So, buddy thought that crummy documentary I have been working on for three years was never going to see the light of day, eh? Well, buddy was wrong. Apparently, there are some canucks out there that actually want to see the thing.

Cleanflix, a film that I shot for two years and edited for one with my co-director Andrew James, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September. TIFF is one of the premiere festivals in the world, along with Cannes and Sundance, and boasts an annual attendance in the neighborhood of 300,000 people. Screening at a festival this size offers some amazing opportunities for our film. The announcement was made today on Indie Wire and a media circus ensued with articles in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, among others.

We sent out our own press release too, hoping to spark some interest from our local Utah media outlets, but they were less interested. Guess what? Don't need 'em. Variety refers to Cleanflix as one of this year's "hot docs" and we are seeing interest in the film throughout the industry. From an interview with Toronto programmer, Thom Powers:

Needless to say, we are very excited for the opportunity to screen at such an incredible event. Other films premiering alongside ours include Steven Soderbergh's new film with Matt Damon and Diablo Cody's new film with Megan Fox. There are also films starring my personal role models Bill Murray and Ricky Gervais, and what looks to be an amazing concert film featuring the White Stripes. But mostly, I'm excited to screen alongside such an great group of documentary films.

There is always a lot of pressure to promote and sell your film and yourself at an event like this, but that is all just fading away into the background for me. I am just happy that we have a film that we love and that we get to share it with so many people in such an ideal setting. This promises to be a truly wonderful experience for us.

You can blame Canada for that.