In Search of a Home for a ‘Goat on Fire’

Not long ago, director Kevin Jordan was ready to give up on Hollywood, telling a friend it might be time to go home to New York to work in his dad’s seafood restaurant.

“I was lying on the floor of my 8-by-10-foot apartment in Venice and I said, ‘I guess I’m going back to the Lobster Dock,’ ” the 25-year-old Jordan remembers telling Derick Martini, who stars with his brother Steven in Jordan’s ultralow-budget, “Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire.”

Moments later, the Toronto International Film Festival called: Jordan’s first feature, a sweet tale of two brothers finding love in Los Angeles, was in. Suddenly, this $40,000 movie that producer’s rep Jeff Dowd calls “not the next ‘Blair Witch,’ but ‘Blair Witch McMullen’ ” was off and running.

First, though, Jordan and the Martini brothers had to race to get a 35mm print to show in Toronto in early September. There, the film won standing ovations and the coveted audience Discovery Award, and earned rave reviews from critic Roger Ebert (“remarkable”) and Daily Variety (“boasts . . . date-movie appeal”). Back-to-back screenings for film distributors on both coasts sent the three friends on two transcontinental flights in four days. There’s been a tidal wave of phone calls from agents who couldn’t be bothered before, numerous power breakfasts and nearly no sleep.

“Struggling in Hollywood is insane--people not taking your calls, people not returning your calls. And all of a sudden there’s this heat that we’re in now,” said Jordan, looking happy but weary. “Everybody wants to meet you . . . All of a sudden they’re your best friends, though they weren’t your best friends three weeks ago when you were trying to show them a [rough] copy of your film.”

No matter how cynical the movie industry can sometimes appear, the story of “Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire” proves that this town can still muster genuine excitement for a fresh discovery. But it also proves something else: While a huge indie phenomenon like the micro-budgeted “The Blair Witch Project” is still possible, a lot has changed in the four years since Ed Burns’ debut indie feature, “The Brothers McMullen,” found its niche. In fact, some say it’s harder than ever to get great little movies to break through.

As the filmmakers continued talking to distributors about releasing their film, Derick Martini--who also produced and co-wrote “Goat”--put it this way: “We’re not the next big thing, but we’re the next little thing.”

“Unfortunately, in today’s marketplace, the demands on theaters do not support a smaller film like [‘Goat on Fire’] that has to sit in a theater and grow and grow,” said Tony Safford, a senior vice president of acquisitions at 20th Century Fox, one of several distributors that opted not to bid on Jordan’s film. “It’s a wonderfully sweet film. But it’s hard to get the proper theater support to sustain that growth.”

Even if acquired cheaply, other industry insiders explained, it can take a minimum of $2 million to merely launch a movie, let alone make it stand out in a crowded field.

Distributors

Didn’t Line Up

That reasoning meant that despite the accolades, the ovations and the raves, there has been no frenzied bidding war for “Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire”--and not only because of its unwieldy title (drawn from the nicknames bestowed on the film’s two main characters by their Native American grandma).

But Dowd, the film’s inimitable promoter (who was immortalized as “The Dude” in Joel and Ethan Coen’s film “The Big Lebowski”), insists “Goat on Fire” is the kind of film that can develop a following from the grass-roots up. In an interview in his paper-choked Santa Monica office, he explained how.

“We’re going to be like a touring rock band, screening this film for free for thousands of people to build word-of-mouth, and taking these four guys on the road,” Dowd said, waving a beefy hand toward the film’s director, the two stars and the movie’s secret weapon: 74-year-old Bill Henderson, a veteran character actor who plays a retired motion picture soundman who counsels one of the brothers on love and life with a grace that Ebert called “unforgettable.”

Dowd thinks the filmmakers’ real-life friendship adds to the movie’s marketability much like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s buddy story helped sell “Good Will Hunting.”

Jordan and the Martini brothers--who call themselves “the goat boys”--have been pals since childhood, when they used to audition together for acting roles in New York City. Jordan went to New York University film school, where his short films won him a fellowship sponsored by Martin Scorsese and a job apprenticing on Scorsese’s film “Kundun.” But he wanted to make his own feature. Armed with a story thought up by the Martini brothers, Jordan and Derick, 25, set about writing a script.

Steven Martini, 23, was already in Los Angeles earning a living as an actor, with featured roles in the Damon Wayans comedy “Major Payne” and the NBC TV series “Prince Street.” But he, too, wanted to make something original. He contributed the “chunk of money” he’d made on “Prince Street” to the $40,000 production budget for “Goat on Fire,” and preproduction began.

Money was ridiculously tight. For months, the filmmakers worked off a 400-page handwritten script (they had no computer) and jokingly dubbed themselves Caveman Productions. When shooting in nine Los Angeles-area locations over 12 days, the filmmakers begged and borrowed to assemble the necessary equipment to get the movie made. When that didn’t work, they tried something else: Lobster.

“My family has this restaurant, exit 9 off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. So I’d say, ‘I don’t have any money, but do you like seafood?’ ” Jordan said, recalling how he’d get his dad to send the crustaceans via overnight mail.

“It was amazing,” recalled Derick Martini. “When we were at our worst, no money, and something had to be done, bring in the lobster!”

For Henderson, it was the script--not the garlic butter--that drew him to the project. “Somehow I knew who that character was when I started reading it,” said the gravelly-voiced actor and jazz musician, who clearly got a kick out of working with his youthful cohorts. “I have ties older than all these guys.”

Since the Toronto whirlwind, which Henderson likened to being in the wake of a comet, everyone’s egos are healthier, but their creature comforts are about the same. During one of the screenings for distributors last month, Steven Martini had his car impounded for nonpayment of parking tickets. Jordan’s cellular phone is beginning to disintegrate and if he wants to eat in his kitchenless apartment, he still has to use a hot plate.

Already the filmmakers are planning their next project (a dark family comedy set in Long Island), so money remains perpetually scarce. For the next few months, they’ll be occupied with finishing a final print of “Goat on Fire,” which was shot on super 16mm, and with crossing their fingers that it will be accepted to the Sundance Film Festival, held in January.

That job at the Lobster Dock, it seems, will have to wait.