Caveh Zahedi
"Shaking the Digital Money Tree for Awkward Celebrity Encounters: Caveh Zahedi at the Screen Forward Lab"
2015. Filmmaker Magazine
I was stoned one night when I had the idea to do a podcast called Awkward Celebrity Encounters. My idea was to record myself telling 52 of my awkward celebrity encounter stories and then release one a week for a year.
My friend Peter works at a sound recording studio dedicated to making audio books for the blind and was able to get me in after hours. That night, I recorded 52 stories, all true, most of which were between two and three minutes in length.
As soon as I uploaded them to iTunes, a friend who heard one suggested that these should be animated and talked me into taking the episodes off of iTunes.
I asked a talented student whose animation work had impressed me if he would be interested in doing the animation for the first pilot. He offered to do three episodes over the Christmas holidays. Two years later, the pilot is still not finished. Tired of waiting, I decide to submit the work-in-progress to IFP’s Screen Forward Lab, a new initiative devoted exclusively to episodic web content.
Several months go by and then I hear that Awkward Celebrity Encounters has been accepted into the lab. I ask my producing partner, Arnold Barkus, if he’d like to join me as a participant and he agrees.
11/9/15
9:00 am Arnold and I are the first to arrive. I start to wonder if we’re in the right place. People finally start trickling in and there’s that awkward moment of “should I say hi?” Taking my social cues from those around me, I don’t.
9:30 am Joana Vicente, the executive director of IFP, approaches me. Relations between us have been cordial but strained ever since I decided not to renew an option on I Am A Sex Addict 20 years ago (!). But she seems genuinely happy to see me and is warm, gracious, and kind. Any and all hard feelings seem to have disappeared. I am relieved. One less thing to worry about.
9:45 am L. walks up to me. I hadn’t spoken to him ever since he stormed off angrily at a Q&A for The Sheik and I. He, too, goes out of his way to make friendly small talk to heal whatever rift had been created at that time. I’m trying to decide whether or not to bring up our past tension, but I ultimately decide not to.
10:00 am We watch all of the projects. Some are significantly better than others. I can’t help pointing this out to Amy Dotson, the Deputy Director of IFP. She answers: “They’re all my babies. I love them all the same.” Well played.
2:00 pm Current Digital Landscape. Robert Green does a remarkable job hammering home the idea that shaking the digital money tree is way more likely to result in money falling at your feet than shaking the feature film or television money trees. He’s impressively sharp. We talk to him afterwards and he gives us a great audience engagement idea for the show.
5:00 pm My head is reeling. There’s so much I don’t know. So much to add to my “to do” list. I should probably get cracking but decide to get stoned instead.
11/10