Shutdown Corner: How did you get involved in crowd-funding?
Dorsey Levens: We were trying to raise funds for about a year, to try and extend “Bell Rung” from 48 minutes to 90 minutes. I met up with indiegogo — they hit me up on LinkedIn, and they said, ‘Listen — we have a platform.’ I had heard of Kickstarter, but I hadn’t heard of indiegogo, though they’re right there in the same network. So, we traded messages and talked on the phone, and I thought it would be a good idea. The other stuff wasn’t working, so it was time to try something new and see what we could come up with. We had tried to reach out to investors — I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles with a lot of connections, and we bounced that around. We have a distribution deal in place, but we need to finish the film and get it released.
SC: Standard negative answer: Football players have all this money; why are you asking for money from the public? Your response?
DL: Well, I don’t have all the money in the world [laughs]. It’s funny, because I went to the Tribeca Film Festival this summer, and Whoopi Goldberg had raised some money on Kickstarter for a movie she’s doing on Moms Mabely. And she got the same response: ‘You’re Whoopi Goldberg; why do you need money?’ But this stuff is expensive. And that’s the way it’s done, most people don’t spend their own money. You go out and get investors — people with money and knowledge of the industry.
SC: Let’s say this film comes out and makes $10 million above cost. What do your public investors get in return?
DL: They get perks — once you make a donation, the perks run from DVDs to autographed photos to helmets, and a trip to Lambeau Field for a Packers game with me.