Scoop

Caught the charming/funny "My Date With Drew." Definitely worth your money. An inspiring "How To" for the lovelorn and indie filmmakers.

There was a Q & A afterwards with star/mastermind Brian Herzlinger and cohorts Brett Winn and Jon Gunn.

*SPOILERS*

Brian was asked if he's seen Drew again. He said she wasn't able to make the LA premiere because she was in NYC. But she invited him to her "50 First Dates" premiere, and yelled his name across a crowded room and hugged him. She asked about "our movie" (My Date With Drew).

Brian's mom asked him to apologize to Drew for calling her slutty. She likes her very much now.

There were many more coincidences that couldn't be shown in the movie. For instance, when Brian got that entry level job at E, his first show was "Lovechain" about...Drew Barrymore. His job was to pull up photos of all of her ex-boyfriends. He posted a black and white picture of himself at the end.

The trio's next project is a TV show in which they help people get their dream dates in thirty days. They asked our audience if anyone needed help.

Some guy asked for a date with Emmanuelle Beart, which the guys quipped would take a lot more than eleven hundred dollars just for the plane ticket to France. Also, they think she's already married (she is, to Daniel Auteuil)

Of course, some bimbo in the audience stood and said she wanted a date with Brian, to which he said "That's not hard. All you had to do was ask." Jon replied that if you really want to score girls, make a movie about trying to get a date with someone else. I'm sure these guys are getting lots of tail.

Brian was asked if he will act again, which he gets asked a lot. Says the only reason he was comfortable being on camera in the first place was because it was just his buddies and a cheap camcorder.

The DVD will be released in November or December, and will contain a bonus twenty minutes of their "date." It was originally schedule for forty-five minutes, but Drew stayed for ninety.

They shot 85 hours of footage, and the first cut was five hours long. They loved every frame of it and thought it was "riveting." The actual editing was the easy part - it only took four months. Actually getting distribution was the bitch.

Before the movie was done, articles about the website appeared in mainstream media. Variety or The Hollywood Reporter did an article on the proposed movie, and they had a ton of interest. But within a few weeks all the heat faded...people loved the idea, but didn't think it was marketable. So they were dead in the water for months, until it finally screened at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival and beat "Garden State", "Super Size Me" and "Napoleon Dynamite" for the Audience Award. THEN everyone in town came back around again, realizing it was worth the risk because audiences loved it. Brian said it is a hard movie to market, because it's basically a Rom Com wrapped in an eleven hundred documentary.

Obviously, the print costs and clearance rights for the music and TV/film clips must make it more in the million dollar budget range. I'm dying to know what the final budget was and what THAT process was like...but they didn't answer questions about the real story behind the filmmaking.

- Mrs. Mia Wallace