Interview with David Basulto and Kerry David
Interview by Jenna Glatzer

David and Kerry have been lifelong friends waiting for the right opportunity to work together and produce movies.  They created Clarity Pictures to achieve these goals.

Collectively, they have more than 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry.  Their mandate for Clarity Pictures is to make lasting entertainment through great story for all ages.  They produced AGENT CODY BANKS and have two more films slated for production by July.

How did you get your start in the film industry? 

Dave: I was working on Wall Street back in the late 80s when I was approached to be an “extra” in a film called “Rocky V.” I immediately got the acting bug after that and pursued a life on the silver screen. After about six years of auditioning I realized I had what it took to produce films: a financing background! When I decided to produce my first feature, “18 Shades of Dust,” I put together the 3 million dollars in 45 days! I have not looked back since then and truly love what I do!

Kerry: I was in a band for four years, so I definitely had a taste for the entertainment side of our industry, but my first start in the film industry happened with a simple interview for a temp position at Paramount Pictures.  It didn’t take long to get a real feel for how exciting life “on the lot” could be so when I was offered a permanent position, I took it!  Making friends was easy in that environment, it was like being back at college again, it seemed that everyone was an enthusiastic filmmaker, and a legend in the making!  

Why did you decide to start your own production company?

It all comes down to choice.  Starting our own production company meant that we could tell stories that touched us, or moved us, or made us laugh!  Don’t get us wrong; working for other production companies is extremely valuable, and we would encourage everyone to do a stint on someone else’s dollar before putting all their eggs in their own basket, so to speak!  However, when you’re ready to produce your own movies, nothing beats the experience of working for yourself and telling the stories that most move you.

Before you two were partners, you were friends-- and I get the sense that you're still "friends first" and "partners second."  Why did you each want to work with each other?  Do you have different strengths and weaknesses?

Kerry: Absolutely. Dave, for instance, can lift a fully loaded car… and I on the other hand am much weaker… but seriously, yes, we definitely compliment each other in our abilities, and then again we also share some important sensibilities too.  One of the most important factors in our partnership for me is that Dave makes me laugh all day long!  We’ve been in some horrendously stressful situations yet I can always rely on the fact that Dave will find the lighter side of it, and after we’ve laughed through the hard part, we are in the right mindset to get to the business of handling it!  It may not seem like an important factor to some people, but believe me, with the amount of pressure that comes with our business… it can mean the difference between success... and a heart attack!  

Dave is extremely knowledgeable in all aspects of film finance sales and distribution and I know that I can rely on him in any situation to be on the same page and have all the answers that I don’t!   Also, we both have distinctly different taste in the scripts that we are immediately drawn to.  We’ve optioned several scripts that I might not have taken the time to read, purely because Dave had read them, liked the premise and suggested I take a read.  Usually, after I read them I can see exactly why he was attracted to it in the first place and can see why they’re something we should bring in.

As to being friends first, ABSOLUTELY!   I’d go as far as to say we’re best friends!  We work out together, we socialize together and of course, we are working all day long with each other too.  You can only do that if you genuinely have a bond with each other, at the end of the day, I really like who Dave is and it just works.  Fortunately, he is also married to the most awesome and understanding woman alive; Laurie Klein.  Without Laurie’s blessing, our partnership would be very difficult!   So with all that going for us, we started “Clarity Pictures”!

Dave: I was first attracted to Kerry from her website, www.imahotproducer.com! I mean, what a beauty!... On a more serious note, after knowing Kerry for many years, I knew she was my complement. Amazing work ethic, tremendous eye for story, and great personality. We always really “clicked” well together.  Although my main strength is the financing aspect of the business, I’m always on the lookout for great stories. When I find something that makes me jump Kerry will read it and see the vision also. She takes it to the next level for us by really dissecting the screenplay and making it better! That in turn makes my life easier for the financing world. I agree with her that we are friends first and that really makes it easy to be completely honest about the business. I am truly blessed to call her friend and partner. When we became partners we realized it brought us clarity, hence Clarity Pictures!

You say that your company "nurtures writers."  Can you explain this?  

Definitely, but we’d like to state that the following pertains more to writers whose scripts we have optioned, than all writers everywhere, as we’ve certainly bumped into a few that are “difficult” and who we would just rather walk away from!  In terms of nurturing our writers, what we mean is that once optioned, we want to enter into a relationship that is collaborative, and creative, not confrontational and dictatorial.

We’ve both been in the position of watching writers come under attack from their producers and it’s pretty ugly.   Intimidating the person who has created the very world in which you are trying to present to the world seems at the very least, counter-productive! 

We try to provide a safe environment for the writer to explore all that he or she is capable of within the world of the script. 

What kinds of scripts are you looking for?  Anything you don't want to see?  

Kerry:  I love kids stories!  I’d love to find another movie like “Agent Cody Banks” that kids can just escape into and just be transported into a whole other dimension.   I am terrified of horror movies, I just can’t watch them, they scare me senseless!

Dave:  I love great stories. I love to be surprised. That being said, when I get a query that I really like I’ll read it no matter what genre it is. Kerry and I both also love old movies and we would love to contemporize some of them or remake them. I will say that thrillers, action and kids screenplays are the easiest to put the financing together for.

Is budget a concern for you? 

Not at all. 

Are you looking for spec scripts, or do you mostly develop ideas in-house and then assign them to writers?  

We’ve done both.  We have enough scripts currently in development, that we’d be more likely to take a spec on board that didn’t need a lot of development purely because of our schedules right now.   Development takes a lot of time, and with all that we have going on, time is not something we have too much of these days!   But it’s definitely fair to say we have developed some great in-house projects and have optioned a few specs.

What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of producing? 

Kerry: Hmmm, well challenging, without doubt, is always finding the money. Then there’s getting the domestic distribution on board.  That’s the hardest aspect in my book.  If you have both of these handled, or even one of these, then you pretty much have a movie.  The most rewarding aspect would be seeing a story that you believed in from the very beginning, that you helped shape and nurture and then find the money and interest in, come together and make its way to the big screen! No sweeter feeling than that!

Dave: I disagree; the challenging thing for me is finding a terrific screenplay!  With a magnificent story, actors will be attracted, directors will be attracted. Then the money is easy. The rewarding thing is seeing projects grow and finally be made.

MGM will released your film, AGENT CODY BANKS, on March 8th.  They decided to release it a couple of weeks early because of an outstanding response from their market testing.  Can you tell me what market testing entails and how it can affect a film?  

Yes, for sure; to put it really simply; the studio will show the movie to audiences that comprise a cross section of the movie going public.  They are required to be non-industry related and have no close friends attached to the making of the movie.  These audiences are given questionnaires and asked to fill in their responses about certain aspects of the movie.  The movie is then graded on the responses from all the collective screenings that were done.  “Agent Cody Banks” tested at 98… almost unheard of!!  

It’s industry standard to test your movie, a tried and true way for studios to get a feel for whether a movie will do well or not.  It can definitely affect the film for the better as (in Cody’s case) the sequel has been written already, and a start date for “Cody 2” has been set for May 2003!  This is how comfortable MGM is that the movie will do well.  If the movie tests badly, it can mean the movie will only be screened in a few theatres, fewer people will see your movie and of course, the deity that is the box office will be affected negatively.   There are those exciting situations (such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "The Full Monty") where word of mouth and ingenious marketing created the buzz that forced the studios to put it in more theatres, but that is definitely more the exception, than the rule.

Has the Internet changed the way you do business?  

Yes, radically, nearly all our query letters come over the internet and we are now a global concern with the submissions we get from around the world.  

Must screenwriters still live in L.A. ?  

Not at all, in fact we started our own worldwide screenwriting contest to find those writers that are outside of the studio system looking for a way in!  If you visit our website at www.indieproducer.net you will see one of the new ways in which we are able to discover new talent.  We literally advertise in every country in the world that we can access via the internet in our search!   All but two of our own projects have writers that live out of state!

Do your homework and study your medium.  Screenwriting is a skill that requires you to learn the mechanics of it, it’s not good enough for you to have a great idea if you can’t execute it in a screenplay.   If this is the case, then work with a partner!    Remember that when you send your screenplay into a production entity, or a producer, or executive, that more often than not, these people have read hundreds of screenplays and will throw your draft out after the first 25 pages if you haven’t captured their interest.  

The more you know the more heartache you will save yourself later on.  Before sending your screenplay out into the big league, have a slew of friends read it who you know will give you their honest opinion, and not just a “Gee George, it’s great” response.  Your screenplay doesn’t have to be perfect when it reaches us, but it has to have something pretty exceptional about it for us to want to invest our time, emotions and resources into putting it on to the big screen with you.

Anything else you'd like to add?  

Yes, visit our website at www.indieproducer.net for more information on screenwriting/film/production and development.  We also offer on-line courses to the independent filmmaker that will improve and hone their ability to practice their crafts.   With our website, we are developing the ultimate resource for the filmmaker to help them avoid all the mistakes that we personally made, along with our peers, and to provide as much information as is humanly possible to launch, or further expand their careers in film.   

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