CORRECTION: The editor of SOMEONE LIKE ME was GABRIEL RHODES (<Gabriel Rhodes on IMDB:>). Somehow Michael Rogers, our genius editor on several of our 1st-and-best ‘Bay Area/San Francisco’ Feature Workshops, through my mistake, slipped into being added as such (see bookplate above). MIKE (<Mike ROGERS ON linkedin>) cut LONELINESS IS SOUL, MAISY’S GARDEN, and CRASH MY FUNERAL (he earned the “A FILM BY” credit on both ‘Maisy’ & ‘Crash’), saving our 10-day productions more than once! In any case, I will get Gab’s correction entered properly into the book as soon as possible! So ‘Hello’ and thanks again to Mike and Gab, for all their gifts of miracle editing.
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Here’s documentary of ‘the making of” SOMEONE LIKE ME—the largest FEATURE WORKSHOP (coming after BLUES FOR THE AVATAR)—which features interviews on-set in Berkeley, CA, with me, writer/director collaborators, cast & crew, during the 4-days of actual film production. It’s a good example of the inner-working of my ‘experimental’ improv approach, to creating a fully-improv feature film in a total of ten days, start-to-finish, with people of varying experience.
To date, I’ve produced 18 feature films in this manner (all coming here to Substack, to be posted over the next few weeks…). More than half of the movies co-produced with son Morgan Schmidt-Feng (see his reel/docs: <http://www.filmsight.com>. FYI: CINOVATION was shot on video in 1997, while “SOMEONE…” is 16mm film/edited on digital video.
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PRAISE FOR SCHMIDT’S BOOKS & MOVIES
“My mother gives me this book called Feature [Filmmaking] at Used-Car Prices, by a guy named Rick Schmidt. ‘Why did you give me this book?’ And I can’t stop reading this book, back and forth, back and forth. And what it said is, ‘You, Vin, who is an artist, who comes from an artist household, can now create your art.’ He super-empowered me. The book changed my life.” — Vin Diesel, actor.
“Rick Schmidt, whose Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices is the undisputed champ of low-budget bibles, was the guru of choice for many of today's top indie moviemakers long before this new trend (DV) began.”— MOVIEMAKER MAGAZINE
“Schmidt offers a complete guide to producing a low- or no-budget feature film. This 1988 original has been updated with a new chapter on digital technology, dealing with agents, and more. Thanks to the success of 'indies' (independent films) such as CLERKS and THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN and with the help of books like this, more budding filmmakers are shunning Hollywood and going it alone.” — "Classic Returns" by Michael Rogers, LIBRARY JOURNAL
“It is a period I am inclined to describe as the Rick Schmidt era of the American Independent film. For it was Schmidt's 1989 book, How to Make a Feature Film at Used Car Prices, that defined that moment as much as the work of any one of its practitioners. Schmidt's book offered tips on how to make a film for $10,000 or less.” — Brian Price, FRAMEWORKS
“I wish I could have had this book 35 years ago, before I made my first low- budget features.” — Vilmos Zsigmond, Cinematographer, DELIVERANCE, THE DEER HUNTER, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, THE CROSSING GUARD, etc.
“Without Rick's book, Clerks would have been an idea that never made it past this page.” — Kevin Smith, Writer, Director, CLERKS, MALL RATS, CHASING AMY, DOGMA, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, RED STATE, etc.
“A must-have for no-budget filmmakers. A most valuable resource in case you don’t have a billionaire uncle or aren’t one of Spielberg’s kids.”— Eduardo Sanchez, Co-Writer, Co-Director Co-Editor, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
“An indie’s A to Z. Rick Schmidt covers all the bases. If you want to jump on in, Rick’ll get you rolling.” — Jon Jost Independent Feature Filmmaker, ALL THE VERMEERS IN NEW YORK, LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE, etc.
“I hope every young filmmaker reads this book and makes his or her first feature before approaching me with a project.”— Otto Grokenberger, Executive Producer, STRANGER THAN PARADISE, DOWN BY LAW. etc.
“It's not the equipment that makes a good movie, it's what you do with it. Rick Schmidt shows filmmakers how to use these new tools to realize their visions.” — John Lasseter, writer/director at Disney/Pixar, Skydance Animation Studios, TOY STORY, A BUGS LIFE, TOY STORY 2, CARS, CARS 2, etc.
“Schmidt's Morgan's Cake is a deadpan, unpretentious delight. The title character, played by the film maker's son, Morgan Schmidt-Feng, is no less comically out of sync with the world around him than the gorilla-suited David Warner character in the 1966 movie for which Morgan was named. Morgan's Cake adopts his point of view and reflects his bewilderment in sly, fresh, unexpectedly comic ways. One of the most promising films of this year’s New Directors/New Films series.”— Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“At last there’s a film (Morgan’s Cake) about adolescence that resounds with truth
and humor.” — DENVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“This (Morgan's Cake) is Schmidt’s personal attempt to answer his son’s and other young people’s questions: to understand what these kids really want out of life and what motivates them.” — BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Rick Schmidt's approach to independent filmmaking doesn't aim to beat down the doors to Hollywood. His latest "no-budget" film (Morgan's Cake) has a refreshingly personal point of view and captures sympathetically and with quiet humor the life of a late-’80s California teenager.” (Nominated for GRAND JURY PRIZE, DRAMATIC COMPETITION. — Lawrence Smith, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
<https://mubi.com/en/us/films/emerald-cities>
“Thirty-five plus years after his 1975 feature filmmaking debut, American Independent Rick Schmidt remains a free-wheeling derring-do filmmaker holding fast to the notion that people's real lives are more truly dramatic, hilarious, exciting and as exasperating as those manufactured by Hollywood's minions. Most everyone falls in and out of love, rejects and gets rejected, contends with failure and success, hatred, ambition, the death of loved ones...It's all there.
To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms. His actors draw on their own experience enabling him to create a unique blend of fact and fiction. In the end, Schmidt makes art and life intermingle and imitate each other.
Aware that the American Dream factory financiers would never fund his films, Schmidt, undeterred, remains the maven of low, low-budget feature filmmaking.”— Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTRE
<https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/in-memoriam-victor-skolnick>
Watch “SOMEONE LIKE ME” (80 min.) here: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/159649439
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