I’m Comin’ Up, So You Better Get This Party Kickstarted…

15 March, 2014 at 10:26 am (benjamin, film, imdblr)

Comedian Doug Benson has a weekly gig called Doug Loves Movies, a trivia show about films that he runs at least partially because of his impressive recall of films he has idly consumed over his personal and professional life — both as a casual audience member and as someone who travels with some frequency and therefore watches a number of films on planes. He occasionally refers to himself as “IMDB”, because he an impressive depository of films and film credits that only the Internet Movie Database could rival, Deep Blue/Watson stylee, and because it allows him to say, “I am DB” — he is Doug Benson. (Not unlike Irwin Maurice Fletcher.)

This is a personal blog, and has been since November 2000, so ego-posting is hardly surprising. And while I (still) don’t (yet) have an entry on IMDB, I have been keeping track of my appearances in various DVD credits, a feat that is much easier to accomplish now that Kickstarter seems to be regularly offering it as a low-impact, high-cost perk for various film projects.

Unlike posts in the past, I haven’t actually made it to the credits of anything new, but I have created my own Doug Benson-inspired tag for this post and for the future: imdblr, or “in movies desperately: benjamin lawrence russell”. And while I haven’t been specifically named in any recent Kickfunded projects, I am thanked as part of a mass in two, appear unbilled in a third, and am thanked in the website credits for a fourth.

 

THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH: BEYOND EXPECTATIONS (Filmed in 2012, funded for distribution in 2013)

 

VERONICA MARS (Raised its minimum funds on March 14, 2013, released on March 14, 2014)

 

HARMONTOWN (Premiered at SXSW, March 8, 2014, Widespread release: unknown)

This documentary about Dan Harmon’s extended fortieth birthday celebration, where he traveled around the country and visited listeners to his podcast after he was fired from NBC’s sitcom Community, was not actually funded by Kickstarter. Harmon reportedly paid for the tour out of his own pocket, and the only Kickstarting the tour enjoyed was the final show, which was crowdfunded in order to hire a larger venue than usual and allow certain competitive perks to attendees. The documentary was made of the various stops on the tour, including the performance in Somerville, Mass., where I was seated front row center along with my fellow Cube-minion, Peter. Neither of us have seen the film, but we did scour the trailer for any indications that we may have made it into the film, and were gratified to discover that even in the 2-minute, 38-second cut of the film, each of us is clearly visible.

Well, mostly… click here if you can’t figure it out.

After having listened to the entirety of the podcasts of the tour, and having been at one of the segments, I still look forward to seeing the storied version, if only to see how much of me is in it. And I’m looking forward to a film experience that essentially depicts exactly how close we were to the action.

 

 
Next: WISH I WAS HERE and MISERY LOVES COMEDY, and I might actually be named in one of those.

EDIT: In email today, Kickstarter announced that they now have their own channel/category on iTunes, so all Kickstarted films can be found, browsed, rented, or downloaded together. Which is interesting, as they otherwise have nothing in common, but I find myself interested in them out of a combination of goodwill and envy of maybe not having gotten in on the ground floor.