Destroy Hollywood (For Just a Dollar a Month)

You can watch my new video about this on YouTube, or you can read it in print form below. The video version has pictures! And my voice! But, if you’re above pictures and my voice, just read it instead:

DESTROY HOLLYWOOD (FOR A DOLLAR A MONTH)

If you have one dollar to spare each month—just one dollar—then together, we can destroy Hollywood. I’ll explain. But first, let me introduce myself.

Hi. I’m Cody Clarke, and I am Hollywood’s greatest nemesis. By that I mean that I am a truly independent filmmaker—and a damn fine one, too. I’ve made over two dozen truly independent feature-length films since 2011, with quite a few of them becoming cult hits. I’m also a thought leader in the space of truly independent filmmaking—I’m the one who coined the term, and I’ve written extensively on the subject for as long as I’ve been making films in this way.

Both as an artist and as a thinker, my mission is to free people’s minds, unlock their cinematic creative potential, and rescue filmmaking from the icy grip of Hollywood and place it firmly into the warm and deserving hands of the people. There and only there can cinema ever truly come into its own as an art form. I’m talking about movies made by and for the people—not inflicted upon us by so-called ‘elites’ who see us only as audience members, never as peers—and especially not as artists, as the only videos that the powers that be want us to make is fleeting content, not lasting film art.

Art forms do not flourish under lock and key. Gatekeepers are not there to ensure that only good art exists—they are put in place in order to maintain authoritarian control over entire modes of creative expression. Sure, there have been great films made throughout the history of cinema, but filmmaking has been handicapped due to inaccessibility—those great films have only been a mere glimpse of what is possible.

Imagine if pen and paper, and typewriters, and keyboards, had been under lock and key for all of their existence. Would we even know what literature could even be yet? Of course not! Then, how do we know what film can be, when moviemaking equipment has been cost-prohibitive to all but a select few for nearly as long as movies have existed? All we have known is merely what has been allowed to exist. Only through recent technological advancements, and the valiant artistic efforts of truly independent filmmakers such as myself, has the art form of film even started to open up, and be able to fully blossom.

What exactly is ‘truly independent filmmaking’, you might ask? Well, the reason I came up with the term was to underscore the fact that the films that me and my contemporaries make are actually, truly, independently made—unlike the vast majority of independent films that are quietly made in conjunction with, or even by, Hollywood.

For as long as you have known about independent film, the term ‘independent film’ has been a bit of a misnomer, and at worst, a fraud—more of a selling point or a marketing ploy than an artistic discipline strictly and dutifully practiced. This has largely been due to the fact that, up until very recently, independent filmmaking wasn’t even really possible. A bit of a bold statement on my part, but I’ll explain.

During the shot-on-film days, making a movie required so much money, and the involvement of so many people, from planning and shooting all the way to distribution, that even if you had the riches and resources and permission to go and shoot a movie by yourself, you weren’t ever really an independent filmmaker, more just a low-budget filmmaker. You still needed the cooperation of studios, and investors, and festivals, and distributors, you name it, in order for your film to ever be printed, and released, and seen.

As such, back then, all ‘independent film’ meant was movies that weren’t made by the four or five biggest studios—because that’s all that anyone could conceive of as far as what was possible independently. But, as times change, and technology moves forward, and consciousness expands, the glaring imprecision of certain terms can rear its ugly head. It makes no rational sense for this to still be the definition of ‘independent film’—and yet, Hollywood persists in using the term in this way, because of how beneficial it is for them to do so. It adds a veneer of coolness and credibility to their projects, and obfuscates the total control that Hollywood has over entertainment. As a result, if you ask a young person what the last independent film they’ve seen is, they might name an A24 movie—despite the fact that A24 is a company valued at over $3.5 billion dollars.

This is a huge part of how Hollywood is able to maintain such a stranglehold culturally. Total domination always means controlling both culture and counterculture, programming and counter-programming, mainstream and alternative, studio and independent. People are given only the illusion of choice—no matter what they choose to watch, the entity of Hollywood always gets its cut from the sale. Even the conservative-leaning so-called independent studios that have popped up recently, established supposedly as an alternative to Hollywood, rely on much of Hollywood’s infrastructure in order to operate, such as working with its unions. The only real, actual alternative to Hollywood is truly independent filmmaking—and a rise of it is the only possible threat to the Hollywood machine.

Early digital filmmaking, as well as tape-based filmmaking before it, is when truly independent filmmaking first started to open up as a possibility—but only just a crack, and not enough to squeeze through or bust through, as a heavy doorstop was still in place. That ‘doorstop’ was the fact that there were glaring visual and auditory differences between films made in this way and Hollywood’s films. Sure, you could go off and shoot a movie on a camcorder, but what you shot would look, sound, and feel cheap. You would have to lean into this aspect in some way in order to tell an immersive story—which greatly limited the type of stories that you could tell effectively. Hollywood, meanwhile, could do whatever it wanted—so the playing field was not even. Then, even as Hollywood moved away from shooting on literal film and into using digital cameras too, the quality of the cameras that they were using was lightyears better than ones available to consumers. You might be shooting on a $4,000 camera you bought from a big box store, and they’d be shooting on a $50,000 camera, and it would be quite obvious which camera was which.

However, everything changed in 2010. That’s the year that a 1080p HD, 24 frames per second, interchangeable lens DSLR camera that records to SD cards was released for less than a thousand dollars—and it even came with a free lens, to boot! I’m talking about the Canon T2i, the game changer camera that made truly independent filmmaking possible. To this day, 14 years after its release, if you put a Canon T2i in my hands, I can give you a compelling and cinematic shot that does not look cheap at all. You would not be able to tell the difference between a beautiful shot from it or a beautiful shot from a top of the line camera that came out yesterday.

On the audio side of things, in 2009, a portable audio recorder known as the Zoom H4n was released. Virtually everyone who does what we do has owned or used this device at some point. There are much better portable audio recorders today, but you can still use the H4n to great effect—it is essentially all you need from a recording device to plug microphones into. Well-recorded audio from it is indistinguishable from well-recorded audio from anything that has come after. There are no longer any technical limitations to digital filmmaking, on a visual or auditory level, in any real sense.

In 2010, with a Canon T2i, and a Zoom H4n, plus a couple microphones and a tripod and cheap lights, you had everything you needed not just to make a feature film, but many feature films. You weren’t just a truly independent filmmaker, you were a one-man truly independent film studio—and you barely even needed a crew, as so many aspects of the filmmaking process had now been streamlined and simplified due to technological advancements. For an initial investment of less than two thousand dollars, you could make as many truly independent feature-length films as you wanted—cutting the cost of each film to mere hundreds of dollars or less. Then, you could release these films yourself on YouTube, or various streaming services, or as print-on-demand DVDs and Blu-Rays. The truly independent filmmaking revolution had officially, finally begun—at least on paper—and even then, only quietly.

These filmmaking milestones weren’t exactly shouted from the rooftops, or even used as selling points for the equipment—as the Gil Scott-Heron quote goes, “the revolution will not be televised”. Most of the people who were going gaga over the Canon T2i at the time of its release were people who saw it as a much better version of a webcam—they saw its vlogging potential. In fact, the only marketing I have ever seen for DSLR cameras has focused on them as a device to be used to make content with, not truly independent films. You had to be a real deep diver, a real reader in between the lines of tech specs, and someone who goes against the grain, to realize what was actually possible now, but that we weren’t being told was possible.

What should have been the indie filmmaking boom to end all indie filmmaking booms—and the first real one, as opposed to so many fake ones in the past—was shaping up to be a bit of a bust. Sure, I made my first feature-length film in 2010 on a Canon T2i, but barely anybody else did. I was ahead of the curve. It wasn’t until almost a decade later that I started to have contemporaries—people a decade younger than me who, entirely on their own, were realizing the same things that I had realized about how inexpensively, and autonomously, and truly independently, you could make films now. Great filmmakers like Joel Haver, and Dan Lotz, to name a few. But even as we each crank out feature-length banger after feature-length banger, released for free online, it’s like pulling teeth when we try to wake people up to what’s possible now.

Most budding filmmakers are still too brainwashed by the prevailing non-wisdom of how filmmaking is ‘supposed to be’. They’re tethered to outdated, obsolete, film school-derived, studio-worshipping methods, such as specialized departments, huge camera rigs, and the involvement of corrupt unions. When they make movies on a small scale in this way, that’s not independent filmmaking, but a cargo cult imitation of Hollywood filmmaking—they’re doing it ‘by the book’, but they have no idea what they are doing, as they are entirely out of time and place. ‘The old way’ only makes sense if everyone involved in the project has already been doing it that way for decades, and has no desire to switch to a more streamlined and sense-making method. People who create in this way are like classical composers, thinking they need an entire symphony orchestra in order to create a compelling piece of music, when really, as the saying goes with country, all you need is ‘three chords and the truth’. You and your camera and your microphone, plus something interesting to point them at—and point them well. Same minuscule footprint as if you were making a piece of content, but instead, you’re making real and lasting film art.

From truly independent filmmaking, you get something that is far more directly from the artist than has ever existed before in cinema. We are only just now getting movies that are wholly authored by a single artistic creator from conception all the way to release—and then owned entirely by them afterwards. A filmmaker as something more like a painter, or a writer, or a musician. The power of that is immense—which is why it is so strongly discouraged by the powers that be, and content creation is so encouraged.

These days, virtually everyone knows that you can make great-looking and great-sounding content all by yourself. In fact, it is what you are told to do by all of society, because it is what Hollywood would want you to do, as it does not affect their bottom line, or cross into their lane. ‘Content’ is the mode of expression that has been carved out for the people so that not much changes in the world as far as power—it is the sandbox that the people are allowed to play in, while the elites play with all of Earth. It pacifies everyday people, scratching their natural creative itch just enough to keep them from realizing all that they can actually do. Cinema actually changes culture—and truly independent films are the only way for the people to take valuable cultural territory away from Hollywood and all those who lord over us.

There is no reason for us to accept mere content creation as our lot in life. We should not give the best years of our lives over to a fleeting, distracting, fad-based, neutered form of self-expression where we are cultural eunuchs. Our voices belong within the pantheon of cinema—in fact, they are the most important voices to be added to it, as we are the ones meant to push the art form of film forward into becoming its actual self. The first 100 years of cinema belonged to the gatekeepers—the next 100 years, and beyond, will belong to the people.

Hollywood cannot stop what is coming for them. Much as California is apparently long overdue for a massive earthquake that could break it apart from the contiguous United States, independent film is meant to eventually break off from Hollywood, and become actual—caused by the truly independent filmmaking movement. The elites can try to slow the split, but they can’t stop it—the greatest and only real threat that Hollywood has ever faced, or will ever face, as far as destruction, is a truly independent film revolution. But in order for that revolution to happen in our lifetime, we must fight for it. That is where you dollar comes in.

I’ve always loved the phrase ‘voting with your dollar’—it calls much-needed attention to what we do, all the time, often without realizing. Every bit of money that we put towards something is an acknowledgement of its value, and a vote for its continued existence. When we think of voting as only something that we do every few years for some politician, we put ourselves on autopilot for the rest of the time, casting votes with our dollar unconsciously, often for things that we don’t even want, and perhaps even lining the pockets of entities that might hate us, and only want to control us.

As it stands currently, the average person might cast hundreds if not thousands of ‘votes’ for Hollywood per year, by way of their individual dollars. This includes even people who can’t stand what Hollywood puts out, or how it conducts itself. Hundreds or thousands of dollars by way of movie tickets, merchandise, streaming service subscriptions, etcetera. I am not asking for you to vote for me, and for truly independent filmmaking, to nearly that extent—I am only asking for one dollar, one single vote, from you per month. If enough people were to do just that, then together, we would be able to change the entire landscape of filmmaking for the better.

After standard, unavoidable, payment processing fees, I would receive 67 cents of that dollar that you send me each month. That may not seem like a lot of money, but if 125,000 people were to each send me a dollar a month, that would be over a million dollars donated to me per year.

What would I do with that money? Well, first of all, if I had even a fraction of that coming in, that would be life-changing for me. Just 5,000 people contributing a dollar per month would cover my rent and monthly expenses—which would allow me to finally do all that I do in and for truly independent filmmaking full time. Even though I’ve made over two dozen truly independent feature-length films in the last thirteen years, as impressive as that might sound, you haven’t even seen me at full strength.

With more coming in, I would finally be able to make bigger truly independent films. In my thirteen years of doing this, the highest budget I have ever had for a single movie of mine is $4,000. Most of my movies have been made for just a few hundred dollars or less, as that is all that I have been able to afford. The total amount of money that I’ve spent across all of my more than two dozen films is approximately $18,000.

While I have been happy to make the movies that I have made, the truth is, I often have movie ideas that I don’t get to make, simply because they would require a budget just outside of my range. I have no desire to make the next Avatar, but I would love to be able to make movies with a bit larger a scope than what I can typically afford. Some of these movies I’ve already even written, and they’re just sitting on my shelf waiting for the day that I have the budget for them.

It’s important to understand that, in previous decades, I’m the type of blatantly talented writer and filmmaker that Hollywood would want to get their hands on and bring into the creative fold of the system. But that’s a function, and arguable duty, of Hollywood that no longer exists—largely due to the fact that they no longer even pretend to want to make quality product. It is now up to the people, who still inherently crave good things to exist, to spot talented people such as myself and ensure that they have the resources that they need in order to do their best creating.

I would encourage any one of you to examine my filmography thus far, and whether or not my movies are even your own personal cup of tea, think to yourself, is this a talent that is breaking new ground, and who deserves more in this world from their efforts than mere poverty? Because, if Hollywood had its way, I would be homeless or dead—not just because of what I point out about independent film, but because I am talented, to boot.

Similarly, one should take into account all that I have been able to accomplish for myself through word of mouth alone. I have never had any money to be able to put into advertising or promoting my movies, or screening them throughout the world—and yet, I have fans. Not a lot of fans, but fans—and the fact that I have just a small amount of fans is not because my work is particularly absurdly niche, but because the vast majority of people who would love me and my work have not yet even had the opportunity to know that I exist.

This is part of why the paradigm that has been set up for independent creators, of monetizing your own small fanbase, is so self-defeating. The idea is to get some small percentage, maybe even 5 percent, or 1 percent, of your total fans to support you. If you have only a small amount of fans, that amounts to a free burrito or two for you each month. So, unless you have the capital to get you and your idiosyncratic, original work out there in front of enough eyes to make that viable, you are stuck creating only that which you know is guaranteed to please the most people possible—and you end up following not your muse, but trends. With that as the case, most people think to themselves, why then be an artist, when one can just be a content creator? And thus, the death of the artist—at precisely the time when art creation has become most possible on a truly independent level.

This is how we are told to play ‘the game’. It is of course not how Hollywood plays the game. Unless we start playing the game in the same way that Hollywood does, we will not succeed. All that works for them would also work for us—and work better for us, as we actually create works of quality. All we are missing is funds.

Part of what I would do with these dollars is advertise truly independent films—not just my own, but anyone’s that are good. Advertising is not dead—in fact it is the lifeblood of the release of any film. I would not collaborate with ad agencies on this—I would simply buy the ad space, in whatever form that may be, and put as beautiful an advertisement for a truly independent film there as possible. Advertising that is not annoying, and instead enriches its environment. Many of us truly independent filmmakers are exceptional graphic designers, on top of being great filmmakers, so this is something that we would particularly excel at.

I would also help various truly independent filmmakers out as far as producing their films. This can be done through me merely funding them, or it can be through using my expertise and experience to help them avoid certain pitfalls along the way. Whatever I would do for them though, I would not own their work in any way, or take a cut from their profits. I simply want to help—I’ve been doing this quite a long time, and I have guidance to add.

Another thing that I would do is create the best possible resources for educating people on how to make great truly independent films. Film school is completely archaic and incompatible with how we do things—you cannot go there and learn anything that will help you do what we do. And sure, there is of course the film school that is the internet, where countless videos will tell you how to do certain things with your DSLR camera or your audio recorder or whatever else—but 99.9% of these video are made by people who aren’t artists, and who don’t do anything other than make these instructional videos. Only fellow artists can truly show you how to make art—anyone else is just guessing. With the right amount of funds, I would be able to ensure that all those who want to learn truly independent filmmaking, today or tomorrow or decades from now, will be able to properly learn it, completely for free, taught by the best truly independent filmmakers.

So, to recap, my plan is to make my own bigger and bolder truly independent films, help others to do the same, advertise all of our movies, and educate the world on how to follow in our path. All of this is what is currently missing, due to the massive lack of funding for truly independent filmmaking. There are plenty of content creators who make a living doing what they do—some even make millions a year. There are no truly independent filmmakers who make even close to that—in fact, virtually all of us are broke. But, we do what we do anyway—we do it because we love it and we believe in it. We are not trying to be popular—we just love cinema, and want to push it forward. We are the meek who shall inherit the earth—but that can’t happen without your support.

You might be asking yourself, why don’t I just find some huge wealthy investor to pitch this all to and get their backing? The reason I don’t is because, the moment they were to cut me a check, they would own me—and my entire purpose as an artist is to not be owned. For them, I would have to do everything I can do to keep them pleased, so that the money keeps coming—my entire existence would become about not pissing them off in any way. Even if it were more than one investor, even if it were ten, that would still be case. It is impossible to be funded by just a select few and not be owned by them.

This is why Hollywood operates in the way that it does: through millions of people’s streaming service subscriptions, as one example. If you don’t like what Netflix is doing, you might cancel your subscription. Hell, a hundred people might. Hell, a thousand people might. But, that means nothing to Netflix, because they are taking in so much money from so many other people, which means that they can do pretty much whatever they want. I want to be able to do pretty much whatever I want, while also affording those voting with their dollar for me the maximum amount of flexibility to contribute or not contribute as possible. A dollar not coming my way one month isn’t going to grind everything I do to an absolute halt, so, if you have to pause your contribution due to some hardship that means that you cannot spare a single dollar my way, that’s fine. This funding model is best for you, and it’s best for me.

How someone huge and wealthy could actually help though, especially if they have a large amount of followers, would be to tell those followers that what I am doing is a good idea, and encourage them to support me. There are people with millions of fans who listen to them, and if maybe 5% of those people were to agree that I’m on to something, I’d be fully supported overnight. So, if you are watching this video, and you do have a large following, first, start contributing to me yourself, and then, encourage those who listen to you to do so as well. Because, without the help of influential people spreading the word, this will be quite the uphill climb.

Similarly, even if you don’t think that anyone in the world listens to you, if you simply share this video, you will add to the total amount of people doing so, and help get the word out that way. Politicians don’t just put up one big sign with their name on it, they make sure that many people’s lawns each have a sign. Everyday people DO have a voice. Use yours, as well as using your dollar.

Without your help, truly independent filmmaking will remain the least funded art form imaginable. We truly independent filmmakers are truly of the people—we receive no grants or endowments or whatever from the government, or from the elites. That is because our art form exists as the greatest possible disruptor to authoritarian control. So, without the support of the people, we have no support—and without the support of the people, I wouldn’t even want support. I have no desire to be propped up or sanctioned by elites—I will never work in Hollywood, and I don’t want to. I am uncorruptable in this regard. There is nothing that Hollywood can offer me that is more important than my own freedom, and the films that I make freely. That is why I am the perfect person to be spearheading all of this. I care more about truly independent filmmaking than anyone on this planet, and I have put more time into it than anyone else, and I will never sell out.

Many of the best movies I’ve seen in the last five years have been truly independent films. This would be the case for you as well, were it not for the fact that you’ve never even heard of these movies or these filmmakers. The reason why you haven’t is that we are blacklisted from the larger discussion of cinema, not for our politics or anything trivial like that, but for the mere fact of our films having been made completely outside of the system, and being actually good, not something to ridicule, but to admire.

No establishment critics champion us. Our entire lifeblood is word of mouth from the people. That this has been enough for some of our movies to be spread around and enjoyed is incredible, as for most Hollywood films, these would be insurmountable odds—many of them would not even be made if they could not pay famous actors to be in them, and astroturf discourse surrounding their product. They purchase the illusion of popularity, whereas every bit of popularity that we have experienced, we have earned.

I exist on the actual front lines of cinema as an art form—I am out here fighting for independence, and freedom, for filmmakers. I am not asking for you to make this your whole life, like it is mine—I am only asking for you to reach into your proverbial pocket and pull out the smallest bill that exists, and hand that to me digitally once a month. A single dollar, twelve times a year. You can stop supporting me at any time—you have total flexibility, though I do hope that you will just set it and forget it. You will not miss the dollar, and you will see the great changes in this world that your dollar will bring.

Certain key figures throughout history are vitally important to some specific pursuit. I am that, for this—and yet, I’ll admit, I currently live in poverty as of the time I am saying these words to you. I cannot remain living as close to the gutter as I do—I must be protected. A healthy culture protects its freest artists, its greatest thinkers. When you are conditioned to not protect people like me, when you have no qualms about throwing so much of your money toward the blob that is Hollywood, but second guess throwing even a single dollar the way of someone like me, we are unhealthy culturally. Let’s fix that right now.

Take a leap of faith and believe in me. I’ve been doing this for longer than anyone, and I’ve put more thought into this than anyone, and I’m more active as an artist in this space than damn near anyone. I’ve pulled all off this off while living a meager lifestyle that would have caused most people to give up ages ago. But I will not give up. Even if my lot in life is to be poor forever while doing the important work that I’m doing, I will accept that fate. But, I believe that if more people knew about what it is that I do, and the importance of this cause, I would have more than enough help. So, if you have made it this far listening to me, and you think that I might be onto something, throw a dollar my way once a month—and together, we can set things right in the world of film.

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