Mise-en-Scenesters
“He kept saying how close he was to getting the financing,” says Rosen. “But little by little our film fantasy would give way to patches of lucidity. This guy would not call us back, or when he did he would talk about how difficult it was to hammer out the details of the tax situation or the liability issue.” Rosen and Pritikin, who were living in San Francisco, decided to investigate the situation on their own. They found the investor’s address in Chicago, flew in, and bribed his doorman $20 for his beeper number. When they finally spoke to him, he “treated us like we were offering him a free plague,” Rosen recalls. The two went back to the producer, who refused to see them. It became obvious that there never had been any deal.
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Humiliated, Pritikin and Rosen left San Francisco for Chicago, their hometown, and ceremoniously torched the script in a grill on the back porch of their new apartment. Then they holed up for two months to begin writing their next movie.
The film’s financing was also cobbled together. With just $10,000 in hand, they presented themselves to line producer Bob Fagan, who had experience working on commercials and some low-budget movies. Fagan diplomatically suggested they use their money to make a trailer to show investors. “I didn’t want to be a naysayer, but I did say I wasn’t interested,” he says. “Then I read the script and thought it was the best thing I’d read in a really long time. I figured they were going to get it done whether I helped or not.”
