What. An. Asshole.
We got about a dozen offers for the show, opportunities most people trying to make it in Hollywood would kill for. Every time we got an offer, I tried to tell myself, Yay, you did it! You’re on the path to get in that hot tub with Johnny Depp! Accept the deal, fool!
Then, when the paperwork finally hit my desk . . . I couldn’t bring myself to sign.
I think at the heart of it, I was afraid that by giving up control, I would lose the sense of fulfillment I’d found through making The Guild. Working on the show meant more to me than a business deal. It felt like I’d finally found what I’d been searching for ever since I left my violin career behind: a sense of purpose. Of meaning. That the blind leap of faith I took after college, with all the ups and downs, had been worth it.
And I couldn’t help feeling a little snotty. What are these fancy-pants companies doing on the internet that’s better than what we’re doing on our own? None of them has produced web shows BIGGER than what the three of us have built in our garages. We can keep doing this ourselves, surviving on hoagies and favors . . . somehow! Was I being delusional?
Yeah. I was.
During one of our last pitch meetings, a nice female executive who wasn’t as slick as the rest said, “We can’t invest right now, but why don’t you ask your fans to help you out?”
Kim and Jane and I nodded and said, “What a great idea!” and then looked at each other as we left. “Is that chick nuts?”
This was the end of 2007, before Kickstarter or Indiegogo existed (they started in 2009 and 2008 respectively), so the idea that random people would be willing to help us fund videos was ridiculous. I mean, she might as well have suggested standing on the corner of an intersection with an “Unemployed, Need Help with Web Series!” sign. I was willing to do that, but didn’t think I’d get a lot of donations on the corner of Vine and Sunset. For my vagina, yes. A web series? Nope.
But after a few more suit-douche meetings, I got desperate. And thought, Sure! Let’s go cyber-panhandling!
I added a PayPal donation button to the sidebar of our website, right above our crucial Myspace icon. I had no expectations and did very little to publicize the button. The only perk I offered was that if you donated, you got your name listed in the show credits. I created all the credit pages in Photoshop myself, and sticking them on the ends of the videos was a pain. But I was willing to put in a small amount of effort. Even if I had to study more stupid video tutorials.
The next morning, I woke up to dozens of emails in my in-box. Donation notifications? What the hell?! Within two weeks we had enough money to make another episode. Even arrogant little me couldn’t believe it. I called up Kim.
“Uh, we have enough money to shoot another episode.”
“What? How? With the PayPal thingie?”
“Yup.”
“That is so weird!”
“I KNOW!”
The process was surreal. And it made me paranoid. I was sure someone was playing a trick on us, like when I was ten, and my mom was certain that the Cuban mafia was conspiring to kidnap us into prostitution when we won a “Pick 3” lottery ticket in Florida. I could smell the same kind of nonconspiracy here, and I was not going to be taken in! When one dude in Indonesia donated three hundred dollars, I emailed him back immediately.
“Hello, thank you for your donation, I think your decimal point was in the wrong place? Happy to refund if it was a mistake! BTW, not traveling to Indonesia anytime soon, and no, you can’t have my address or phone number.”
It wasn’t a mistake. People were willing to support us in order to make more Guild. Of their own volition.
It was the best compliment I ever got.
In total we had about five hundred people donate over six months, enough to fund the rest of my pilot script, rewritten and expanded into ten episodes. We didn’t collect enough to pay the actors (or ourselves), but we were able to bring on more crew to help us, pay for locations outside our own houses, and buy a boom microphone that wasn’t held together with duct tape. Toward the end of the first season, I even had to take the PayPal button off the website.
Why? Because so many people kept donating, I couldn’t fit all of them into the end credits. That was smarter than, you know, LENGTHENING THE CREDIT MUSIC TO FIT MORE DONORS, FELICIA.
Viewer by viewer, our show was proving that we didn’t need the Hollywood establishment in order to succeed. We were gonna break the system and take over the world!
Thank you, Ross Perot!
[?Bad Ideas Seem Good Sometimes!?]