Chapter 1

Getting Ready to Produce

It was the fall of 2004, and I was riding high. I had produced three awardwinning films with another one in postproduction. I was on my way to the Osaka Film Festival, where my first film was being honored and I was the star attraction! My film partner, Kate Robbins, and I had three more films lined up, packaged, financed, and ready to shoot in Australia, when bang – the bottom fell out. The UK laws governing film production changed, Australia followed suit, and all three of my projects collapsed. Overnight, all that work was lost. We needed to stop and reassess.

THE TIME WAS RIGHT

As it turned out, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The same month that the UK changes were happening, the US federal ...

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