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'LIFE COACH: the movie' needs nurturing distributor to help it achieve its higher potential
LOS ANGELES, Calif.— The tongue-in-cheek comedy’s young producers...need a distributor quickly if theirs is to be the first personal-coaching movie to hit the market.
”Just found out two weeks ago that Paramount has green-lit a life-coach movie. Hope ours gets out there first,” says co-producer Leila Charles Leigh.
She and Jennifer Jostyn and director Josh Stolberg have devoted most of the last two years to making the “extremely low budget” movie. How low? “We put it on our credit cards,” she said.
Low budget, but getting great buzz. Everyone who sees it likes it, she says. And since they put up the http://www.lifecoachthemovie.com website which features the movie’s trailer in dial-up, dsl and super-high-speed streaming video, “we’ve been hearing from life coaches all over the world. They have a great sense of humor and are appreciative of the little jabs. They recognize that what we are doing mostly is poking fun of Los Angeles.”
The faux-documentary, she says, is about “the rise and fall of Hollywood’s premiere life coach. The life coach to all the stars.”
Everyone talks about him, raves about him, but no one really has a clue what he looks like. Because he’s a typical life coach. He works by phone.
Then he decides to change that. To rub shoulders with his glitterati clientele. The climax of the movie centers around the lavish coming out party he plans for himself and his clients. What happens then is…the surprise ending that we aren’t going to give away.
Initial filming was done in six weeks and mostly improvised. And then the next two years were spent going back and re-shooting to fill in holes and get the whole thing to make sense. Plus “shooting lots of little celebrity cameos, fitting those in as they were available,” she said.
Here’s how they describe the birth of the film on the website:
”LIFE COACH: the movie was conceived at a dinner party where a few people had probably had too much to drink. Shooting began immediately. The actors bravely improvised from a ten-page treatment. Conditions were grueling: sexual misconduct was rampant, bagels were scarce, and the actors were subjected to the grossly inflated egos of the temperamental producers.
”When Stolberg (director), Leigh (producer) and Jostyn (producer) weren’t bickering or threatening each other with lawsuits, a film began to take shape.
“LIFE COACH: the movie is an honest and poignant look at Hollywood, a town in which this production team is proud to live. At least until something better comes along.”
Just what do Leigh, Jostyn and Stolberg know about life coaching?
“We talked to quite a few life coaches,” says Leigh. ”We talked to people who had life coaches. We looked at a lot of life coach’s websites.”
Yes?
”But neither my partner nor I have ever had a life coach.”
Not that they wouldn’t consider it. But their credit cards are a bit stretched right now, financing a movie and all…
What if the movie takes off? Things would be different. Consider these excerpts from their bio blurbs:
“Life Coach: the movie is Jostyn’s first writing and producing venture. If Life Coach: the movie is successful, Jostyn feels strongly that she deserves all the credit.”
“Leigh has had a blast collaborating with Jostyn on LIFE COACH: the movie, but truth be told, if the film is successful, she hopes to start her solo career immediately.”
“Stolberg greatly enjoyed his experiences on LIFE COACH: the movie. If the film is successful, he will be flabbergasted.”
That wouldn’t be a problem though. Because if the movie is successful, Stolberg will be able to afford a coach to help him “powerfully transform” that flabbergasted-ness.
(Coaching Insider March 23, 2005-- Volume 1, Issue 3)