AboutMickey Grant Expertise How to produce, direct, write,edit, and market documentaries
This would include which camera is best for a particular project and aspects of how to approach story telling of your documentary. Also, it is becoming even more critical to have a buyer at a major network such as the BBC (they are called Programme Editors there) to interact with during your production. It's really important to know the market and the major players to know who you are.
Experience Over 30 years of working on various aspects of documentaries with my primary function today of shooting and directing them.
You can find out a great deal about my films and background at my website at www.creativehat.com
Also, several of my films are on Google Video and can be found by going there and typing Mickey Grant in search. They include my latest film, INJECTION which is 80 minutes and shot on HDV. Also, THE CU CHI TUNNELS, which previously was distributed by BBC Worldwide and has played on major broadcssters in over 50 countries.
Organizations In the past I've been a member of many organizations such as NABET union but don't find it necessary in today's market place.
Publications About.com
Education/Credentials BFA from SMU in 1971 in Film
Masters in film from UNT in 1986
Awards and Honors Gold Award, Best Feature Length Documentary, Houston International Film Festival
Golden Star Halo Award, Southern California Motion Picture Council
Honorable Mention (twice), Chicago Film Festival
Second Place, Sinking Creek Film Festival
Question QUESTION: I am looking for the title of a documentary that I saw in 2000 maybe 2001 on IFC about a filmmaker who was struggling with funding for his movie that was 70% complete. After borrowing money from friends and family he ultimately goes to Las Vegas and gambles it to raise the complete amount he needs. Unbelievably he returns to his hotel room, sets up his video camera and explains how he just won 8 times his money, over $80,000! But shockingly he takes out a gun and kills himself. Has anyone seen this?
ANSWER: I've searched the internet like crazy. I personally haven't heard of this story. If you find out, I'd like to know. Making documentaries, especially for my 35 years, is easy to understand how it would drive someone crazy.
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QUESTION: Mickey does it help to let you know that it could have been 2002 or maybe 2003 but no later than that.
Hollywood is very good at blurring the line between reality and fantasy: art often imitates life, so one never knows what to believe or who to trust. The new DVD release of They Shoot Movies Don’t They: The Making of Mirage take all this sort of thing one step further with interesting, if somewhat confusing results.
The movie, shot in 2000, is billed as a true story based on a lie. It is a mockumentary about what happens when Tom Paulson, a successful film executive, leaves his cushy but unfulfilling job to produce and direct his own independent production. Shot in Beta-video the film follows how Tom completes his film (called Mirage) and go into post production.
He runs out of money and spends the rest of documentary begging, stealing and borrowing from everyone he can in order to complete the project. In the process, he loses his wife -- and everything else -- and heads to Vegas for one last shot, loses and kills himself in a hotel room.
Don’t worry: the movie is all just a hoax; and is all fun, even if it’s nothing too original: we’ve seen this sort of behind-the-scenes Hollywood scenario many times before from Robert Altman’s The Player to Sunset Boulevard; all the way back to the Janet Gaynor version of A Star is Born. There is nothing new here, but stay tuned because it gets very interesting. The DVD extras are what make this project a unique and worthwhile venture. What happens their fake documentary when the filmmakers attempt to get it distributed is a new lesson in Hollywood absurdity.
The DVD contains two voiceover commentary tracks: the first is standard commentary by one of the principals -- the usual kind of stuff. But the second “secret” audio commentary is worth the price of admission. On it the creative team discuss their attempts at finding a distributor for their little joke of a movie. After a long, thorough search, they ended up in the office of Harry Klein, the man who did all the promotion and publicity for The Blair Witch Project, another great hoax of a film.
They assumed that he understood their movie was also a hoax, but soon realized that Mr. Klein had embraced their movie because he thought it was real. So there they are between a rock and a hard place. Do they blow their potential deal by telling Klein that their movie isn’t real, or do they continue on with the whole hoax and risk everything? What an odd dilemma for them to be in. So what do they do? Well when cornered by Klein they say their movie is "…as real as it gets…" - whatever that means. And then things go downhill from there. You’ll have to listen to the track to get the full details but rest assured it gets crazier by the minute.
Anyone who ever thought or dreamt of producing or directing a movie on their own should be forced to watch this DVD as required research about how crazy things in Hollywood can get. They Shoot Movies Don’t They completely erases the line between what’s real and what’s not and will have you scratching your head and wondering who’s fooling who.
