Harsh Truths About Being A First Time Filmmaker — R. Ellis Frazier
R. Ellis Frazier, Director, Producer, CEO at BADHOUSE Studios: Don’t get sucked into people’s own agendas of what they need. You just make sure that you serve the product, you serve the movie always.
Film Courage: I heard you say in another interview that a common thing for a lot of filmmakers, actors, screenwriters is that they think their first film is going to set the trajectory for the rest of their career. They maybe get a lot of praise, they walk the red carpet, people are emailing and you think that it’s up from there and that it’s actually very humbling to see that it’s not?
Frazier: Yes, I do. Certainly I was humbled, our crew was humbled (our group). The first film we did had Andy Garcia [La linea a.k.a. The Line movie, 2009] in it, a whole bunch of people. There’s red carpets, there was premieres, there was all kinds of great screenings and everything else and the Weinsteins are calling you, the agencies are calling you and you realize that we’re not given in this world and this universe of film that we’ve decided to be in, there is no stability in it. The trajectory is what it becomes and you have to make it. It never goes to easy street. We were doing a lot of things thinking that we were trying to get this bigger film made. It’s just you’re going to do this one this size and the next one’s going to be the next size. It turned out the next one was half the size and then the next one half the size of that. So that is my filmmaking journey. It doesn’t go like that, it’s all over the place and I realized that we can go back to the original idea which is just to keep working and not let anything get in the way, not let all the needs to set things up here and set things up here and raise all this money, let’s find a way to just keep making films and add value. My trajectory went through this kind of organic film school because when I was with the first film I didn’t really…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
R. Ellis Frazier is a producer and director, known for Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright (2010), The Line (2009) and Misfire (2014) and many more. Frazier is the CEO of Badhouse Studios Mexico.
