Reel: It sounds like you are having a very busy summer!
Reed Fish: Yeah, it's not even summer, but it's certainly been really busy. I've been prepping for the movie to come out. Running the MySpace page alone takes a lot of time. Reading bad reviews about myself (laughs), but, honestly, I am a little over all of that. Other than that, I am getting married in about a month, so I've been doing a lot of work on that as well.
Reel: Congratulations on getting married! So how did you come up with the idea for I'm Reed Fish?
RF: I wanted to write something, I wanted to write a movie, and since I know my own life, I thought I'd use it as the backdrop for the film. I was kind of inspired by the notion that people who make these small, independent films, especially their first ones, they tend to be semi-autobiographical. But I thought, screw that, I'm going to go the whole way and make mine 100 percent autobiographical. Of course, the version that finally came out on film is really not all that autobiographical.
Reel: Oh really? In fact, I was going to ask you that next. How much of I'm Reed Fish is actually your own life?
RF:That's the big question, and I try to remain a little vague about that. Thankfully my parents are still alive and I've done a few radio interviews promoting the movie, but that's the extent of my radio career. I wrote the first draft of the film five years ago, well, five years before we started shooting, and over the course of that time I probably ended up writing 50 drafts of the script. As you go, the more you change things for the good of the story. And, ultimately, I don't know that my life was super interesting. But, certainly elements of my personality, certain relationships and a lot of emotional truths remain in the finished version.
Reel: Do you feel like your fictional town, Mud Meadows, is a lot like the small town where you grew up, Red Bluff, California?
RF: It's a smaller version of Red Bluff. Red Bluff is getting a little bigger now; it has about 10,000 people, whereas Mud Meadows is more like 1,000 people. But a lot of the elements of a small town are the same. It's kind like when you are living there and you get used to the small town life and that all seems normal, then you leave and you realize, OK, maybe that's not so normal. I definitely drew on my experiences, but I did have to embellish a little bit. In fact, the title of the film was originally Red Bluff, but we changed the name only about a month before we shot, and I was going to actually use locations from Red Bluff - even though we weren't going to be shooting there - but for rights issues we had to end up changing names of stuff so people didn't sue.
Reel: So how long have you been writing?
RF: This is really my first writing endeavor. My background is visual arts, photography, and I had always been interesting in making a movie, but I didn't know any screenwriters. So I just sat down to write something myself with the idea that I would make it myself, shoot it on digital video, make it for $50,000, but a couple years later the script fell into the hands of a producer in L.A., and they wanted to make. We worked on it for about three years before we ended up shooting. That's pretty typical of these little indie films, it's always an uphill battle the whole way. Any movie that gets made is pretty much a miracle. That's really true. So, sure, I might not have received the reviews I wanted to get or the box office I wanted to get or even a wide release, but at the same time it was 99 percent more successful than most movies that ever attempt to get made. Just having your first script get made into a movie and go into theaters is pretty unbelievable. So sometimes when you get down on yourself about how it maybe didn't turn out how you wanted, you have remember how incredible the experience is.
Reel: It sounds like you were pretty involved in the process of making the film.
RF: Literally, I am running the MySpace page, so I am still working on the film. I didn't end up directing it, which was my original goal in writing it, but I didn't quite have the connections or the experience. In this case, I was a first-time writer, we had a first-time producer, so we ended up hiring a director. But I was still very involved; I was on set everyday, I gave input and worked on the music quite a bit and now the promotion. Of course, a movie with my name all over it I'm not going to just abandon.
Reel: Were you involved in the casting process?
RF: I had input, but I didn't really sit in on a lot of the casting meetings, just a couple. I think I'll always take some credit though for planting the seed to cast Jay [Burachel] because I was such a big fan of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. When you are casting you get a list of all the people that are available, and I'd say, "What about this guy?" And they finally decided to meet with him and, of course, he's amazing and great! He's got a long career ahead of him. Actually, we opened opposite his other movie Knocked Up a few weekends ago. He's got a huge future ahead of him. If you want to liken him to anyone, he's probably a lot like John Cusack. He's just so endearing and likeable, yet he's so approachable. He's also such a great actor; he's terrific at improving stuff. Just a really nice guy.
Reel: Other than promoting your movie and getting ready for your wedding are you working on any other projects?
RF: Yeah, of course, that's the whole thing. You've always got to have something out there to keep you going. Nothing is done yet, but I have another script that's starting to make the rounds and a few TV show ideas were trying to pitch. It's just such a process. It's tough down here. Just getting the first one made was such a struggle, but you don't want to throw all of that work and experience away, but that movie certainly didn't make me a rich man or even a solvent man, necessarily. But I do really want to make this a career. I'm really hoping I'm Reed Fish does find its audience, if not in the theater then on DVD. The preorders from retailers have already been really strong, so that's great. We just haven't had a huge marketing budget and it's so hard to get noticed in the theatrical market. You have to spend so much money and we haven't had those resources. But we have also been very fortunate; Alexis [Bledel] went on Letterman, which was pretty amazing. It was such a highlight to hear Dave and Paul arguing about my name during the opening of the show. It was such a surreal moment. But Alexis was so gracious to do publicity for the movie, so hopefully we'll get a bump off of that.
Reel: The film opens in Portland this Friday, and it's been in theaters in New York and Austin. Are there plans to run the film at other cities?
RF: Ah, well, probably not. At this point I'm hopeful, but I would be surprised if we open wider than we have. So if people want to see it in the theater they better make the trek to Portland! We got pretty decent reviews at the festivals, people seemed to really enjoy the film. We were just at the Aspen Comedy Festival in February, where people sought me out to tell me how much they enjoyed it, but the response from certain critics was a little shocking. The film is by no means perfect, we're a small independent movie, but overall I think it's solid, but maybe it was a little too sweet for some critics. That's my take on it. But the moviegoers who have seen it seem to really like it. It's the matter of having the marketing muscle. With a movie like this one, if you don't catch fire immediately and get people going to it, it's as if they just move onto the next thing. I am really hopeful about the DVD prospects.
Reel: You got pretty lucky with your first screenplay; do you have any advice for people looking to into the screenwriting or moviemaking business?
RF: Trust your instincts and work really, really hard. Don't give up and don't let people tell you that you can't do it. My first instinct is say don't do it. But that's not real helpful advice. I would prepare anyone wanting to take the indie route that it is a long, hard, tough road. It's almost so tough that maybe if I had known how tough it would be I don't know that I would have done it. It's that difficulty. But ultimately it can be really rewarding. And, you know, things are changing. You can make movies for a lot less money. You can make them on your own. As far as the writing aspect goes, I think a lot of people are resistant to do rewrites, and that's something that is just part of the process. You really need to give a script a lot of drafts. I know, you get so sick of it and it becomes the last thing you want to do but it's so helpful. My other piece of advice is to make it short. It needs to be under 100 pages. The shorter the better, it's easier to hold someone's attention for 87 minutes rather than 105 minutes.
