The Hollywood Killer: A Perfect Model
The thing about doing what we do—making movies truly independently, often for peanuts—is that in and of itself, yes, it’s a revolutionary act, it’s powerful, it’s ushering in an important and long-needed, prophesied yet rarely realized, period of cinema. No longer is ‘independent’ an illusory or downright fraudulent word—it can finally, accurately, be used to describe a type of filmmaking. Sure, we qualify it with ‘truly’, as by-and-large the public still does not understand the difference between our real independent creations and the fake ones that are produced in conjunction with the entertainment industry—but, they’ll come around. Enough of us doing what we do, and it will happen. There is a way to strap a rocket to what we do though, and accelerate the demise of our authoritarian enemies—a perfect model for us to execute, with the help of the people. As a thinker who is future-focused in regards to film, I’ve given this a lot of thought—and I have the answer.
Sites like Patreon, built on the back of the YouTube model of chasing ‘subscribers’, aren’t the answer. I know this even just from the fact that they take an absurd cut from what the people who like you want to give you each month. Compound that with the paid ‘upgrades’ they offer, and it’s clear that this is not an entity with seriousness towards disrupting the system, but instead one which exists to prey on unsuspecting creators. Can one be successful on Patreon? Absolutely. But what are you building—and is it on solid ground? There have been instances of Patreon kicking successful creators off their platform for ‘behavior’ (free speech) that they find untoward, and which did not even occur on their platform specifically. That’s serious, but that aside though, the ‘subscriber’ model that Patreon is built upon, imported from sites like YouTube, is already a misstep. A powerful artist is one who does not need fans, and doesn’t need to chase them. The studio system, to its credit intellectually, has historically insulated individual talented people from ever having to be independently popular in order to be powerful and successful. Wasted time is wasted time, and if you’re chasing and building a base of followers, you’re not creating. Worse, you’re going where your audience wants you to go, and that is always a dead end. They don’t know best—the purpose of an artist is to be ahead of the audience at all times. The cart must never be put before the horse, the inmates must never be allowed to run the asylum—yet that is exactly what the internet would lead you to believe is what ‘independent creators’ should do, and bank on. This points to an advantage that the industry will always have—there, people are given money and resources and power no matter how obscure they may be to the public. So, unless one operates similarly, one will never be as powerful—true power for the true independents of the world must come from rejecting that nowhere path which has been laid out for them by the authoritarians who want to stay authoritarians.
The public must step its game up too—it must put its money not towards what it necessarily ‘likes’, but what is effective. Treating artists like commodities renders one powerless culturally. Instead, one should treat artists like valuable pieces on a game board. Who out there, regardless of what you think about them or their art, is doing something no one else is doing, and to a level that is incredible? Those are the game pieces that must be protected. A businessman who only invests in what they personally like will soon be broke, as what are the odds that only what one likes will be successful, and only what one doesn’t like will be unsuccessful? Impossible. So, instead, a smart businessman looks for indicators, looks across myriad factors to figure out where their money will turn to concrete and not into vapor. That is how the public must think in regards to culture. That is how the public must think in regards to everything, actually—in politics, for example, the ‘likable’ politician is often so ‘likable’ that special interests ‘like’ that they’re likable too—and they are soon corrupted. You see the same thing with content creators online who sell out to whomever pays the bills. All of my favorite artists, the most important ones who ever did it, I would say, are not people-pleasers necessarily, are not palatable to advertisers. We’re drifting into Ayn Rand territory here, but there’s a certain level of stubbornness that MUST be there in order for an artist, or their art, to mean something. Were artists never to insist that ‘wrong’ notes were correct, we wouldn’t have the blues, or jazz.
‘So’, you might say, ‘if Patreon is out, and fanbases in general are out, what’s in’? Well, how I’m trying to build Kill The Lion Films is in. If it weren’t in, I wouldn’t be building it in the way that I’m building it. I have skin in the game here—I am trying to grow what I myself do, and I am trying to grow truly independent filmmaking as a whole, for everybody. I share my strategies so that they can benefit everyone and be implemented by anyone.
Right off the bat, instead of using a site like Patreon, which takes an unnecessary cut of your money that comes in, just use a site like Stripe, which is a simple payment processor that takes a beyond reasonable cut. The only cut taken comes from standard credit card transaction fees, which are unavoidable (they are, quite literally, the cost of doing business) plus a couple cents extra or whatever. (Patreon takes a LOT comparatively.) Anyone who wants can make a Stripe account and start accepting payments, whether recurring or one-off. Stripe is what Kill The Lion Films is build upon—when people decide to fund us for $2.50 a month, or $30 per year, it goes through Stripe. There are competitors to Stripe, like Square, but I prefer Stripe. I am not being paid to say this—I’m not sure Stripe even knows I exist, other than me being a user of their service. All I know is that it’s the better thing for artists to use who want to accept payments from people who want to pay them an amount of money. Fuck Patreon.
In addition to using a great payment processor, one must make sure the money one seeks from people is as small as possible. This is because, as in business, anyone who is funding you inordinately highly owns you. If someone were to give me $10,000 a month towards Kill The Lion Films, then I’m working for them, I am not my own entity. This is because any day they could wake up and based on a whim decide they don’t want to support me anymore, and then I’m out on my ass—so, keeping them happy is my entire job. For that reason, in order to maintain our true independence, we don’t want a big fish—we want a ton of tiny fish that form one giant mass that is as effective as a big fish. If everyone’s giving $2.50 a month (an amount that could fall out of one’s pocket into couch cushions over the course of a month, and not even be noticed) then if someone up and decides they’re done supporting us, it’s not a huge hit. They have maximum mobility, and we have maximum insulation from the random whims of others.
At Kill The Lion Films, our goal is to find 50,000 people that want to support us to the tune of $2.50 per month. That would give us about a million dollars per year to make films with. That would be insane, that would be amazing. But, were we to do that by trying to please people, by trying to grow a ‘fanbase’, it would ultimately be self-defeating—we would be giving them what they want, which is to say, we would never be changing anything. We would be catering to the sexual or non-sexual fetishes of nerds—that’s all it always comes down to. If we’re illustrators, we must always draw our characters the exact same way. If we’re storytellers, we must always tell the exact same stories. That is not culture—that is cult. You cannot change the world if you are powered by people who want nothing you do to ever change.
Our ideal supporter is someone who maybe doesn’t even like our movies, but understands that we have given this shit more thought than damn near anyone, and so we’re probably onto something, whether they ‘get it’ or not. Someone who thinks ‘well, that Cody Clarke guy is kinda weird, but I’m damn sure glad he’s on OUR side’. If there’s anyone out there who puts as much attention and serious thought into truly independent filmmaking as me, while also maintaining a steady stream of feature film output, I don’t know of them. I’m one in a billion, and living at the same time as me is like living at the same time as any great and important artist and thinker throughout history. Bare minimum, making sure I can eat is a net good. Making sure I can soar? Next to godliness.
Netflix Premium, as one streaming example, is $22.99 per month. I’m asking $2.50 per month for Kill The Lion Films. They’re asking about 9x more than me, and most of their subscribers don’t even like what they have to offer. Maybe they genuinely enjoy one show, or a couple movies on there a year. All I’m asking is that a truly independent filmmaker such as myself receive the same respect, and I’m not even asking for the same amount of money, but instead a mere fraction. And because I’m asking so little, when the next great truly independent filmmaker comes along and is ready to create on a huge level like I am, you’ll be able to afford to support them too—$2.50 to me would simply become $2.50 to each of us. Suddenly, that’s two truly independent film studios, each with a million dollars a year to their name to create with—and with the kind of filmmaking we do, a million dollars goes a hell of a long way.
This is all so clearly the future, and I am so clearly right about this, so let’s just get there. If you would like to help me find my 50,000 strong, and get paid doing it, I’ve started an affiliate program for Kill The Lion Films where you get 20% of every monetary contribution we receive that begins through your unique referral link. So, for example, if you find us 100 people, that’s $600 per year that goes to you—and continues going to you for as long as they continue contributing. Find us 1,000 people? $6,000 a year. Find us 10,000 people? You’re making $60,000 a year, completely passively past the initial work of finding of the people. It’s a great deal, and if you want to be an affiliate, DM me.
Everything I’ve laid out here as far as this model works for any kind of truly independent artistic pursuit, whether it be music, art, books, whatever. This is because things that work work. So, let’s break away from chasing popularity (which is what the industry literally tells us to chase—no misstep on their part, as it’s self-defeating) and instead let’s just take power. Let’s educate the populace to the power of their dollar as a disruptor, and let’s kill the lion together: https://killthelionfilms.com