Doogan: Okay, sounds like Jerry’s business sense is starting to rub off on you. Speaking of big titles, I hear that your most ambitious to date is going to be A Better Place — what can you tell us about it?
DMJ: A Better Place was one of those mythical films that fans of Kevin Smith have heard of, but a lot of people hadn’t seen — including myself. I read about the film on the Ain’t It Cool News site, and it sounded cool. So, I met Kevin at a signing, and I hung out there to talk to him for a while. Prom Night was one of Kevin’s favorite “bad” films and he knew I was involved with the laserdisc. When I mentioned I wanted to do A Better Place, he said, “Okay.” Two years later we’re doing it.
Kevin made a joke that he wanted to do a Prom Night-like disc. He even signed a book for me that said “Don, I want to do a Prom Night-like disc.” Funny thing is, Prom Night doesn’t have really any extras, but for A Better Place we’re going all out.
Doogan: What’s going to be on it?
DMJ: We did a brand new transfer. To do that, we used the best telecine ever, the Spirit Datacine from Philips. It’s not only the best, but it’s the most expensive telecine unit in the world. Supposedly, James Cameron used this same make and model to digitally compose scenes for Titanic. We got a great deal on it, so I used it, more as an experiment for 16mm really, and now the film looks better than I expected it could — it looks like a 35mm production.
It will be presented in multiple aspect ratios, a-la Dr. Strangelove, to properly show the compositions the way they were originally intended. We re-timed it, and now it looks better than the theatrical prints. We are adding additional scenes, and are remixing it at Skywalker Ranch. Because View Askew has connections at the Ranch, we were able to get a 5.1 mix. Both director Vincent Pereira and myself are very proud of this one. I’m also excited because I get to go to Skywalker Ranch — I can’t wait!
Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are doing a filmed introduction, and there’s going to be a commentary track with director Vincent Pereira, and it will contain additional scenes not included in the film festival prints. We’ll throw in anything else we can dig up. Another really cool thing is that Eion Bailey, one of the film’s stars, now has a big role in the upcoming David Fincher film, Fight Club, which will be a huge push for us.
Doogan: Eion Bailey must like those violent stories. Which, actually, brings the point up — has it been a problem distributing the film because of A Better Place’s “high school violence” story line, especially in the wake of the Columbine incident?
DMJ: Yes. It was an unfortunate incident, and bad timing. I had the film since January 1999, before the Columbine incident. After it happened, I knew it was going to be a problem. I remember calling up Vincent Pereira and asking him, “What the hell are we gonna do now?” It was just a bad, bad time to be doing a film like this. I knew the film’s content may even be a problem even before the shootings, but I don’t really mind controversy. Teen high school violence is kinda frowned upon across the board, you know?
I loved the film though, so I wanted to do it, regardless of the content. But because of Columbine, after I sent screeners out to potential VHS distributors — people we’re freaking out! Even though it’s a film about anti-violence (it’s probably one of the most anti-violent films ever made) using violence, some distributors take a look at the film and are immediately worried about the content. People were like: “Uh, no… we can’t do this right now.” We’ll have to wait for the Columbine incident to cool off, and continue delaying the film for a bit. I haven’t even officially announced the disc yet anyway. We do have a big distributor who is interested in the film now, but I can’t really talk about any arrangements at this time. It’s not exactly something people would think Synapse would do but, like I said before, I’m trying to expand my audience a little, and introduce people to films they have never seen before.
