In 2011, Vincent made Grashaw. With his friends in the Coatwolf filmmaking collective he produced Ultra-Low budget “Bellflower.” It was a breakout hit in Sundance next section and Oscilloscope Laboratories unbuttoned the dirty, handmade portrait of toxic love and self-destruction less than a week after the premiere.
“It was when (Oscilloscope founder) Adam Yauch was still alive and (A24 founder) David Fenkel was still there,” Grashaw said. “The year we were at Sundance, I want to say 30 sold films. It was crazy.”
Being a festival outbreak started his career and gave access to a network of agents, managers and general meetings.
It didn’t make a damn thing to get a movie made.
He laughed. “I don’t think I ever had anyone to say yes to a pitch. I feel like in a strange way, I am outside the business compared to what I was then.”
But at a time when so many filmmakers fight, he has directed four functions over the past 14 years; Two more are in the mail.
Between movies and other filmmaking side plays he has not had a straight job since 2010. “You meet tough times and good times,” he texted me. “Away from being in debt to having a lot in the bank account. But I have been able to travel and see a lot of the world because of this job so I’m grateful.”
The secret to his success? Instead of begging for development agreements, he decided to chase something more practical: money.
“I thought it was easier to find people with money than to get a company to say” yes, “said Grashaw.” You would be surprised at how many rich people are out. “
He had no agent. A chance connection through a girlfriend funded his function registration debut, “Coldwater.” (That trip involved a music mogul, Elvis suite with a ball hole in the wall and drove back from Vegas with $ 300,000 from the thousand dollar-slots.)
More prosaically, he received “What Josiah Saw” from the ground after six years thanks to Randomix productions, whose main Ran Namersode is also chairman of the Redworth Capital Group.
Private investors’ motives have not changed: they want to break into Hollywood, see a family member on the screen or park money for tax reasons. So far, Grashaw’s films have budgets between $ 750,000 and $ 1.2 million.
At this point, your future filmmakers may roll your eyes. Oh, can you make movies with a rich guy? Hi, me too! But Grashaw’s success goes beyond an open checkbook.
“So many investors get burned and people steal their money,” he said. “The producers take huge fees and I don’t move with it. When you handle other people’s millions, there is a responsibility.”
Grashaw is probably too practical to be an author. He responds to “founded human stories”, but they may be his script or someone else’s and the genre’s insignificant. And he doesn’t make movies without thinking about the audience: Who will pay to see it?
Or, as Grashaw expressed, “You can’t be a selfish artist who is just not open to crap.”
It is a balance that some filmmakers cannot stomach. Grashaw gets it; He could not stand endless pitch meetings and their slowly rolled “No.” He is not the kind to stress at a cocktail party.
“The only time I really feel” in the industry “is when you give offers to actors, because you are dealing with their representatives, and then during all festival or distribution parts of the experience,” he said. “Other than that, you just create a family, make a movie somewhere in Kentucky or Oklahoma. I don’t necessarily feel that I’m involved in that side of the world.”
Grashaw did not go to film school. An early version of “Coldwater” landed in the 30 best scripts for HBO’s first season of “Project Greenlight” when he was 18, which led to industry interest.
“At the age of my twenties, I learned more about the contract right and got fucked and weave and who to trust,” he said. “It was my school.”
It also taught him that “If you find people who want to make your shit you suddenly are to do it. I felt there was a way you could cut through.”
Working outside the Hollywood funnel does not mean total freedom. If a supporter wanted a role for his partner, he would figure it out. If they wanted their children to learn the ropes on sets, good. Dana Namerode had a small role in “What Josiah Saw” and is the female lead in his upcoming “Keep quiet”, with Lou Diamond Phillips and Nick Stahl.
“Tossing her in the movie was a condition, and sometimes it can blast on her face, but in this case she was exceptional,” Grashaw said. “It made it much easier to go,” Holy Shit, okay, let me find projects that fit the form for the actor. They want to make good movies. “
The balancing act between artistic ambition and commercial vitality gave him final cut. Even more important was that it kept him working.
“What Josiah saw” drew solid reviews and distribution through Shudder in 2021 and finally gave Grashaw a reason to sign with representation.
“There is no reason to have an agent or manager without some warmth on you and then Parlay it for something,” he said. “You’re just on a list and if you don’t have anything they won’t do anything for you. And I don’t blame them. There are many people they have to focus on. I want to level up. I want to direct TV and I want to make some bigger films of studio type.”
His representatives recently conveyed a deal for him to direct his biggest budget project yet, an action movie of $ 10 million for Millennium Media. (That connection came via Tim Blake Nelson, star in Grashaw’s drama “Bang Bang 2024.”)
He also develops a television series, “Loss Prevention”, inspired by his before “Bellflower” years working undercover to arrest store lifter at JC Penney and Saks Fifth Avenue. (A friend did Winona Ryder-Bysten in 2001.) The only job job I ever had. We were as dysfunctional as the people we arrested, “he said.
He has never felt confidently pitching -TV; With a network you are so square inside the funnel. “I think independently produced television is the next thing to come,” he said. “It’s very meaningful. Cheap TV shows that you can make eight episodes, and whether it’s a tubi or finding an avod. I think it will somehow happen.”
If there is a way to stay on the outside, he will take it.
“It’s definitely the one I’m going to do independently,” he said. “It’s not too expensive either, I don’t think.”
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dana@indiewire.com; (323) 435-7690.
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