With 11 days to go on his Kickstarter campaign to raise $1.25 million for a humorous thriller about people addicted to blood, director Spike Lee couldn't be working harder to raise funds for his new project, one dollar at a time.
While such well-known celebrities and properties as Zach Braff, "Veronica Mars" and Paul Schrader have made news for reaching their Kickstarter goals (and then some), the famous aren't immune to failing at crowdfunding. Zosia Mamet, star of "Girls," and her sister raised less than $3,000 of a $32,000 goal for their would-be music video. Melissa Joan Hart nabbed only $51,000 of a $2 million goal for a film in which she'd play a single woman attending her sister's wedding in Thailand.
So with a higher profile name comes a high embarrassment level if the funding doesn't pan out. (In that vein, James Franco did the right thing: He opted for Indiegogo, which allows for a project to receive the money its raised regardless of whether it met its goal.) And even before that, there's the inevitable media backlash to the supposedly rich and famous asking for fan dollars.
But Lee seems to have overcome that negative spin. Indiewire recently published a piece on the ways in which the director has turned a controversy into a project people want to support. And his hard work plays a huge part in that -- sending out constant Twitter announcements, updating the campaign page, re-editing the campaign video, appearing candidly on television and more. He's not just relying on his name.
We have no problem with fans supporting these campaigns and paying for something they want to see. Lee has grown his fanbase over decades. There's a difference between fans and the people who complain about and criticize rich people for going on Kickstarter. Most people don't go tub-thumbing on TV to flog their crowdfunding push. You gotta admire the guy.
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