Gary: So you're Danny Fisher.

Danny: Yes.

 

Gary: You are the president of City Lights Pictures. Could you tell us a little about the company, how it got started and you're role in the company?

Danny: Sure. The over all company is City Lights Media Group. I'm actually just now taking on the title of CEO. I don't know what the difference is between CEO, President or Chairman or anything but I keep getting letters on my desk that say CEO so I figured what the Hell, it's sounds a little higher up. But, I started the company twenty-one years ago with my two brothers Jack Fisher and Joe Fisher. We basically see ourselves as trying to provide something that I don't really see people doing right now. What we're looking to do is every facet of the movie and television business. We own and run one of the largest postproduction facilities in New York with twenty-four editing rooms. We are now building a sound facility. We do commercial production, music video production and productions for corporations. We recently started a television division about eighteen months ago.

 

Gary: So you're developing television pilots now?

Danny: Television pilots, television series, documentaries, reality shows. We have deals in the works with about ten networks, just in the past eighteen months. We've put together deals with VH1, MTV, FUSE, Court TV, The History Channel, TBS and some others. So far mostly they've been development deals, TV specials and pilots. Right now we are in the situation where we have five television series that are very close to being picked up.

 

Gary: What's happening on the film front for City Lights Media Group?

Danny: We executive produced John Waters' new movie A Dirty Shame. And of course we are now heading into Tamara and we have a number of projects after Tamara lined up. The reason I bring up all the things we do is we are trying to bring together a sort of full circle production company that encompasses everything from servicing somebody who needs a dub, to somebody that needs to edit a project, to sound mix a project, or graphics animation for a project or design a website. We represent commercial directors. For example John Waters is somebody we represent as a commercial director. And the thing I like about being involved in every aspect of it is that everything kind of cross-fertilizes. Really what it is, we had a relationship with John Waters on the commercial side and we had a relationship with Larry Clark, the director of Kids. We worked with him on the commercial side and on the postproduction side. And most of our postproduction work is for television networks. So I can walk around our facility, we have two locations, walk around and visit twenty-four editing rooms and everybody is there. There are film people there; there are TV networks, writers, producers and directors. About two years ago I walked around this place and I said wow, it's all right here. Sort of the whole world I want is all right here. And all I've got to do is just do it. So we approached John Waters about his next movie and we commissioned a script for It's a Dirty Shame and he was there. We had a relationship with him. And we made a deal with New Line Cinema and it all happened very quickly. That film is wrapped shooting and it's being edited here so we get to see John Waters every day. It's a lot of fun. And we are close to being finished in about a month or two.

 

Gary: What's the Larry Clark deal about?

Danny: And Larry Clark who we've done commercials with….we had a project called Interrupted which is the life story of Nicholas Ray who is actually my mentor. Nicholas Ray is the director of Rebel Without A Cause. And I co-authored a script with Oren Moverman who wrote Jesus' Son. And we were looking for a director and Larry Clark is right there with us and we talked to him.

 

Gary: I love Kids and Bully. Have you seen Ken Park?

Danny: No I actually haven't seen Ken Park yet.

 

Gary: Yeah, I'm still trying to come up with an opinion of that film.

Danny: I like Kids it was very shocking but Bully was very excellent. I really enjoyed that. We signed Larry Clark to do Interrupted just after the time he made Bully.

 

Gary: So is this going to be a Larry Clark film in the respect to the style of his teen sex dramas?

Danny: It's going to be R rated. He's associated with a certain type of movie and I don't like speaking for him but I don't think he wants to be known as doing just this kind of thing, a teen sex kind of thing. And this is not. This is a story about an artist, Nicholas Ray. And you know there are also parallels to Larry Clark's own life. Nicholas Ray in addition to being a creative genius also had a problem with alcohol and drugs, as did Larry Clark. The period of time we are dealing with was when Nicholas Ray was like fifty-nine to sixty. Larry Clark is not quite that old but he's in his fifties. I respect Larry's work a lot and between that and the material and certain parallels in his own life I think they sort of matched. But you know back to what I was saying, these people are all working here in different capacities. They all know us from other areas and that's why I like this game plan. The one area we are not in is distribution. We've formed an allegiance with Armada Pictures. It's not a formal allegiance; we're doing it picture by picture.

 

Gary: So by conceptualizing and doing all these different things you basically bring the talent to you.

Danny: Yes.

 

Gary: Not to mention as a company you always stay busy doing industrial work, commercial work and film and television work.

Danny: Exactly. On the movie side where we have the artier, edgier projects like John Waters', A Dirty Shame and Larry Clark's, Interrupted we also had a genre script come along called Tamara which was written by Jeffery Reddick who created Final Destination and I read the script and found it very entertaining.

 

Gary: What is Tamara about?

Danny: It's set in a suburban high school. The lead character is Tamara who is seventeen years old. And she's one of these girls that are awkward and unpopular and she gets picked on. And some kids play a prank on her and she ends up being killed. But of course she surprises everybody because she rises from the dead and she returns as a seductive, mind-controlling vixen hell-bent on revenge. She comes back as this sexy, vengeful, demon you know.

 

Gary: She's more of a demon than a zombie, you're saying.

Danny: Oh, yeah she's not a zombie she's definitely a demon. Afterwards she comes back being really sexy and confident and full of rage and the ability to get even.

 

Gary: So it's horror movie. Are we going to have some quality kills?

Danny: Well she gets revenge let's say that. She gets even. I'm not into violence or anything but I sort of relate to the thing of being picked on or tormented and coming back and being able to take out revenge. It's a lot of fun and it's really well done.

 

Gary: What stage of production are you in with Tamara right now?

Danny: We are just about to begin pre-production. We just got the financing end between Armada Pictures and us and we're getting ready to shoot in mid June. We signed the lead, Tamara going to be played by Sarah Thompson.

 

Gary: Yeah, she's popular with Angel's TV show crowd, along with some other things.

Danny: We signed her because we loved her read. She read along with a number of other girls and we just liked her the best. She was very engaging for a cold read. A think she's going to be really big and I hope this becomes her Carrie. We looked at dozens of actresses, she just way over everybody else. Now we're looking to round out the cast and get going on it.

 

Gary: What kind of budget are you going on with a film of this size?

Danny: It's in the five million range.

 

Gary: Are you looking for a theatrical release?

Danny: Yes this is definitely going to be a theatrical release. We haven't signed on with a domestic distributor yet. We have signed with a number of foreign distributors.

 

Gary: Well that's half of it there. Do you feel that people tend to underestimate foreign distribution on small productions?

Danny: When we bought the script and announced it in the trades. We got a lot of calls from various companies. But we wanted to piece together the financing ourselves. And we did in through private investor groups and Armanda Pictures. And we set up foreign presales. Armada was at the American film market and had lots of offers. Armada took the best offers and we went from there. We wanted to finance the movie without domestic distribution in order to retain the greatest amount of creative control and equity.

 

Gary: And given your studio situation you can do that.

Danny: Yes.

 

Gary: What kind of advice can you give to young up and coming filmmakers out there?

Danny: Well, if you want to work with a company then try to get an internship early on and help out. As far as how to get a movie made, I have no advice on that. It's hard to get a movie made. I wonder day and night how to do it. I used to think getting a movie made was ninety nine percent psychological and now I believe it's one hundred percent psychological. I think if you have your mind absolutely set on getting something done, then it must happen.

Gary Schtulz is an independent filmmaker from Chicago. You can reach him at highertribe@yahoo.com.

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