Spike’s New Film is Bad, Kickstarter Funding is Worse

AALBC.com’s movie critic, Kam Williams, is my friend.  He is one of the most easy going guys I know.  He has reviewed thousands of films over the course of his career, and has been writing for AALBC.com for over a decade.  His film reviews are rarely harshly critical. Indeed, he usually finds something good to say about most films, and is more than fair when critiquing Black independent films.

However, Kam’s review of Spike Lee’s latest film, Da Blood of Jesus, was the most scathing review that I can recall him ever writing.  The review was so unfavorable, were it not for my years of experience with Kam, I may not have published it.

…a boring vampire adventure that’s severely lacking in terms of tension, thrills, premise, storyline, special f/x, plausibility, production value, editing and character development… 

What makes this film’s effort doubly disappointing is that nearly $1.5 million dollars was raised, via Kickstarter, to fund this film.   When I originally learned about Spike using Kickstarter, to fund the production of this film, I did not like the idea. Someone with Spike’s resources shouldn’t use Kickstarter; his campaign would draw attention and potential funding away from smaller indie filmmakers, who could benefit more from the crowdfunding platform, without the competition from a wealthy celebrity.

Kickstarter, who made a lot of money from Spike’s massive campaign, explained how Spike’s campaign actually helps other filmmakers, “Spike Lee brought three decades of fans to Kickstarter when he launched his project.”  Kickstarter implied, but was careful not to state, that Spike’s backers would also back other filmmakers.  Kickstarter has all the data, to tell what actually happened.  They could very easily run a report to tell us how many people, that were new Kickstarter, whose first contribution was to Spike’s movie project, and who subsequently went on to contribute to small indie film project.  I suspect these figures were not reported as it would not support the narrative Kickstarter has created.

But is the real kicker; if this film makes any money, all the profits goes directly to Spike.  If the film loses money, which this one very likely will, all of the risk goes to the contributors.  Meanwhile, Kickstarter receives 5%, off the top, no matter what happens!

The entire risk reward model has been turned completely on its head.

I appreciate there are people who are completely satisfied contributing $5,000 to this project, in return for a signed poster.  But they deserved more—at the very least a decent movie.  The best hustle in the world is the one in which the mark is completely unaware they have been scammed.

The web’s most successful websites, rather than liberating the masses, is really just making it easier for the rich to get richer.  The real trick, however, is that this is happening right before our eyes, and many of us of think we are benefiting from the situation.