In less polite corners of the Internet, Kickstarter—the online site for raising money for any cause or project a member dreams up—has been slandered as cyber-soliciting, or virtual panhandling, or 21st-century begging. But don’t tell that to Rob Zombie, who’s following in the footsteps of Zach Braff by seeking Internet donations for his upcoming feature 31, a horror saga about people trapped in a kill-or-be-killed game against a group of psychotic clowns. For Zombie, a heavy metal titan and established filmmaker, the move has struck some as more than a bit absurd. After helming a series of B-grade genre gems that include The Devil’s Rejects, two Halloween reimaginings, and last year’s The Lords of Salem, it’s difficult to imagine how a marquee celebrity talent like Zombie—with a devoted following all his own, to go along with horror cinema’s reliably rabid fan base—can’t scrounge up enough funding for what appears to be another modestly budgeted bit of hardcore cinematic sleaze.
Zombie is touting creative control as the reason for going the Kickstarter route, an explanation that was similarly employed by Braff when he made his controversial online plea for cash for Wish I Was Here, the follow-up to his adored-in-some-circles 2004 cult hit Garden State that was subsidized with the help of $3.1 million raised via Kickstarter. It’s not surprising that iconoclastic filmmakers working on the fringes of the mainstream would covet the artistic freedom that comes from making movies without input from various pesky producers. Still, the fact that multimillionaires want fans to pony up money for production costs, on top of those same folks then having to pay to see (and, later, rent and/or purchase) the films, is destined to come off as unreasonable at best, and low-down at worst.
And yet, there’s nonetheless something heartening about this ongoing crowd-funding phenomenon that’s divorced from the director’s own behavior—which, for Zombie, also includes giving away movie and music memorabilia, props, and other assorted goodies to investors in 31 (including meet-and-greets with Zombie himself, a role as an extra in the film, and lifetime backstage passes to his concerts). And that’s because regardless of whether Zombie actually needs financial aid from loyal die-hards to complete the film, or is just exploiting their devotion for profit, his fans’ eagerness to monetarily back him confirms not only that cine-fandom is as healthy as ever, but that pop-culture consumers still value content enough to pay for it.
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That people continue to spend on entertainment is not, on the face of it, Earth-shattering news. Yet in an age of rampant online piracy in which acquiring and enjoying movies, music, TV shows, books, and video games is as easy as downloading a torrent file from your local Pirate Bay or Kickass site, the readiness of fans to shell out for things they can get for free is more than a tad encouraging. Moreover, those most likely to illegally download works are in all probability anti-establishment 18-34-year-old males—which, of course, is also the prime demographic of heavy metal and horror fans. In other words, the individuals you’d most expect to be open to the idea of using file-sharing services are, in Zombie’s case, now the very people going out of their way to subsidize, sight unseen and without any personal input into the process, the creation of his content.
It’s hard not to see this as a strong rebuke to the types of opinions expressed in a recent piece at The Verge , in which author David Pierce showed no remorse for downloading a leaked DVD copy of The Expendables 3 ahead of its nationwide release, and then weakly tried to justify his theft by stating his desire to see the film in theaters (which he did, only to then slam that decision in a subsequent, equally risible article). Such a stealing-is-okay attitude is common in the online arena, where, thanks to early overseas premieres and pre-theatrical VOD and pay-per-view rollouts, pristine digital copies of movies are readily available for anyone canny enough to navigate the BitTorrent waters. That tech-savvy fans can easily stream these pirated films from their computers to their home theater set-ups merely further stokes the impulses of many to circumvent the law and snatch whatever strikes their fancy.
Thus, even if Zombie and Braff’s fan-financing plans seem galling in light of their own plentiful resources, their crowd-funding ventures speak to the fact that, when given the option between supporting or not supporting the artists they most admire, many fans are increasingly prone to choose the former over the later. That, in turn, suggests a heartening way forward for outsider filmmakers to get their movies made with the assistance of those who most value their work. Not to mention, it bestows fans with heretofore unheard-of influence over the sorts of films they’re offered by industry artists. It’s a power-to-the-people movement that, for better or worse, promises to give fans exactly what they want.
Nick Schager is a film critic who's contributed to The Dissolve, Esquire, and The Atlantic, among numerous other publications. He tweets here.
