(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Actor and film director Zach Braff has raised $2 million in three days to fund a follow-up to his 2004 film, Garden State.
Over 30,000 Kickstarter backers pledged $2.1-plus million to Braff’s Wish I Was Here, with 25 days left in the campaign.
Not everyone is pleased with the results of this highly-successful crowd-funding effort. Chicano filmmaker Cuahctemoc Esperanza is upset that Braff raised millions yet no one has pledged any Kickstarter money for his documentary Chicana/o Vegan-themed Musical Resistance in Chiapas During the Early 90s.
Esperanza blames Braff. “I don’t think it’s fair that this celebrity posts his Kickstarter and people are throwing money at him. He sucks… all the money all the money out of the internet!” he told PNS.
Zach Braff’s premiums included advance screenings in London and San Francisco, or a chance to appear in his film for only $10,000.
Esperanza is exasperated.
“My premiums are just as good as his! For $5 I will send you a sticker depicting a Chicana dressed as Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos playing a song about the beauty of radishes on a ukelele. For a $10 pledge I will send you two stickers.”
Esperanza’s Kickstarter page also indicates other various levels of support:
- $25 will get you all five stickers
- $50 includes all the stickers you want, plus a VHS copy of the final documentary
- $1,000 gets you a copy of the documentary, a co-executive producer title and a t-shirt with a sticker on it.
The project’s Kickstarter page also promises “If you pledge $150,000, then YOU can do the project yourself.”
The 49-year-old Latino filmmaker also accuses Braff of “doc blocking:”
This project has everything that audiences love, like veganism, shrill political protests and also a soundtrack of obscure Mexican folk music played by angry Mexican-American college students. And puppets.
So far I have no pledges, unless you count the one my girlfriend Tonantzin made to test out the page. I’m sending her a sticker, and making her associate producer. I hate Zach Braff. But he was funny in Scrubs.