If you’re a frequent listener to This American Life, you might already be familiar with the story of Duke Fightmaster, a guy who started a talk show out of his bedroom because he wanted to take over Late Night after Conan O’Brien left. His real life story is being made into a movie, but he doesn’t get to star in it, so he’d like to make a movie of his own. He’s real close to making it happen.
I’ve interviewed Fightmaster in the past, so he sent me a text message about the Kickstarter campaign, and we spoke on the phone briefly about the project. Fightmaster is an interesting guy because he’s been trying so hard for such a long time to reach what many would consider an unobtainable goal. Not a lot of people ever get to host a talk show. Some people might think he’s crazy, but I think he’s inspiring.
Take a listen to his segment on This American Life and tell me you’re not inspired to go do something ambitious.
Although I had heard the This American Life story about him, I didn’t realize that someone had purchased the rights to that story and it’s in the process of being turned into a movie. I asked Duke who would be playing him, but he says the role hasn’t been cast yet. According to Fightmaster the film about his life is being directed by Jacob Chase who did the 2010 film The Four-Faced Liar.
The Kickstarter is close to being funded, but it’s in its final hours. He’s seeking $11,000 which is practically nothing as far as film budgets go, and at the moment he’s at $9,397. The campaign ends just after noon tomorrow so there’s still time to donate, although at the moment it doesn’t appear Amazon’s payment system for Kickstarter is working. I tried contributing earlier today and ran into an error, and when I spoke with Fightmaster on the phone he told me he’s been hearing the same thing from a number of people. If the system were up perhaps it would be funded already.
As a tie-in to the Kickstarter campaign, Fightmaster has been producing a web series where his character starts a Kickstarter campaign to try to fund a movie. He’s already shot two separate endings, one where the project gets funded and one where it doesn’t. You can see all the episodes of the web series on the project’s Kickstarter page. Personally, I’d like to see the ending where it gets funded.
(via Kickstarter)
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