KICKSTART THIS

Kickstart This: 'Fat Kid Rules', 'Follow Friday' Doc & 'Meaning of Life'

by Ben Pearson
May 28, 2012

Welcome back to another edition of Kickstart This, FirstShowing's weekly column dedicated to spreading the word about cool indie projects that need your help to become a reality. This week, we've got three solid film projects that we want to highlight: actor Matthew Lillard's feature directorial debut called Fat Kid Rules The World; next, a twitter-inspired documentary called Follow Friday the Film; and a project trying to raise a million dollars to find the Meaning of Life. Take a look at these three new projects, sound off in the comments below, and don't forget to toss the filmmakers a few bucks if you can. See them below!

If you only know Matthew Lillard as Shaggy from the live action Scooby Doo movies, then I highly suggest checking out his tremendous performance in a movie called SLC Punk! that came out back in 1999. But the actor has a passion project called Fat Kid Rules The World that played at this year's South By Southwest Film Festival. We've written about it before and it looks pretty damn solid, but they need our help to bring the film around the country on the Vans Warped Tour and then give it a small theatrical role at the end of the summer. Watch the video below, and stick around ’til the end for the trailer for the movie:

For more details on Lillard's Fat Kid Rules The World, or to help fund the movie, visit its Kickstarter page. Lillard is hoping to get $150,000 by June 16th, so if you like what you see, help donate!

Next up, there's Follow Friday the Film, a really cool documentary inspired by Twitter. How many people do you follow on twitter that you've never met in real life, and why do you trust their opinions? This documentary aims to answer some of those questions by traveling across the country and interviewing 140 people (or 140 characters… get it?) to ask them three questions: who are you, why am I following you, and who else should I be following? (You can follow me @benpears, by the way, and follow @firstshowing if you haven't yet.) It's a simple premise that I wish I would have thought of myself, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what this project turns into. Plus, it's a great one to help support because you can have so much input on how the project is shaped by recommending all kinds of things during the filmmakers' 8,000 mile trek across the United States. Check it out:

For more info about Follow Friday the Film, or to help support the project, visit its Kickstarter page. Director Erin Faulk is looking for $15,000 by June 15th, and they still need some of our help.

And finally, there's Meaning of Life. Producer Marc Erlbaum (of Will Ferrell's Everything Must Go) is admittedly using the million dollar goal as a way to generate publicity for the project, but it got my attention, so he's doing something right. After a shaky start in his pitch video, Erlbaum gets on a roll and tells us all about what he'll do on his quest for the meaning of life. It's a simple pitch, and I like how he basically compares the meaning of life to the Holy Grail as represented in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: something that is "quiet, small, and easily missed if there's too much noise and spectacle." Since the meaning of life is such a subjective thing for everyone, I doubt what he ultimately finds will be any sort of definitive answer, but his pitch convinced me that it would be interesting to give him a shot and see what he and his team can produce on their journey. Take a look at the video below:

For more on Meaning of Life, or to help support the film, visit its IndieGoGo page. Erlbaum is looking to collect a whopping $1,000,000 by July 12th, but the good thing about IndieGoGo is that even if they don't reach that goal - which, let's face it, they won't - they'll still be able to keep whatever donations they do receive and they can hopefully come up with something cool for us to see when it's all finished.

That's it for this week's edition of Kickstart This. Hopefully you like the projects we featured, so leave us some feedback in the comments letting us know what you think about each of them. I didn't get any e-mails from you guys this week about projects you'd like to see here, so keep your eyes peeled and send any suggestions to BenPears85@gmail.com. As always, thanks for supporting these indie projects, because these filmmakers couldn't do it without you. For our KickStart This archive and projects we've featured, visit here.

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