Lynn Chen, one of our favorite actress/food bloggers, is working on a film and reaching out for supporters to donate towards the production. This is an indie project feature film (not a documentary), called “The Man’s Guide to Love,” written and directed by Chen’s cousins, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, based on a website of the same name launched by Chen’s husband and some friends two years ago. The website compiles a video each day of a different man answering this same question: “If you had one piece of advice that you’d give another man about love, what would it be?â€
The video mosaic on the website is cool, and funny. The feature film promises to be even cooler and probably funnier. Chen is on the cast list, as is her terrific food blog, The Actor’s Diet.
This film is being funded (hopefully) by the public — that would be you — via Kickstarter, and Chen and her cousins are asking for donations starting from a mere $5 (which will entitle you to for special behind-the-scenes updates). There are lots of levels and lots of different premiums (posters, hats, “we love you” calls), including your name in the credits for $150, a cameo in a party scene for $1500, a chance to be a crew member for $2000 and this for $5000:
Lunch with Laurence Mark at Sony Studios. Larry’s produced over forty movies, including “Jerry Maguire,” “Working Girl,” “I, Robot,” “As Good As It Gets,” and “Dreamgirls.” He even produced The Academy Awards. He’ll take you to lunch at the Sony Dining Room in Los Angeles, and his stories about the movie business are absolutely priceless.
Naw, you say — how can they promise that kind of access?
Because Levin and Flackett aren’t no fly-by-night dreamers. They’re Hollywood vets who wrote and produced the TV series “Wonder Years” (one of my all-time favorites because that kid in the series was one year younger than me — the show was about me! — and I still remember the pilot made me cry). The couple also directed “Little Manhattan” and “Nim’s Island.” Here’s their bio:
We’re husband/wife screenwriter/directors. Kind of half man, half woman. We started in television, writing and producing “The Wonder Years” twenty years ago. God, that was a great show. Then we did a bunch of other stuff. The first film we directed was called “Little Manhattan” (Fox, 2005). The second film was “Nim’s Island” (Fox/Walden, 2008) starring Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler. Our next movie is called “The Man’s Guide To Love” based on a website we created www.themansguidetolove.com. It’s all about love and men and the internet. The world is changing. The way movies are made and stories are told is changing. We want to be part of that change.
So be secure that your investment isn’t going to some online scammy kind of project. This is for real, and the people involved are first-class.
The project is aiming for $200,000 — more than some of the Kickstarter projects I’ve written about before, but dirt cheap for a feature film. If the campaign doesn’t reach the goal by 6 pm April 19, all the money pledged by then go back to the donors and the project gets nada. They have 21 days left to raise a little over $180K, so show some love for Lynn and her cool project.
Here’s the Facebook page for The Man’s Guide to Love.
