Steal This Movie

Last summer, Blume screened the film for his buddy, Go and Swingers director Doug Liman. Over a beer, Liman told him he had a problem on his hands: Blume had made a commercial comedy on an indie-film budget without a studio behind him from get-go. Liman figured they'd need $10 million to open the film nationally, which was too expensive for an indie and too small-time for a studio to bother with. "You're stuck in the middle," Liman told him. No shit.

Walsh and Roberts have pretty much given up hope of getting Martin & Orloff into theaters; they've already finished shooting a second movie, an official and all-improvised UCB production titled Wild Girls Gone. They don't have a distributor for that one, either. Blume's hoping a DVD deal, most likely with a record company, might pay for a small theatrical run. But there are investors to pay back, so he'll see.

"I would love to see the picture open very small," he says. "I would like the marketplace to prove me wrong. If we open it in a couple of cities and nobody goes to see it and we get terrible reviews, well, fine. At least we tried. But to never have the opportunity would be a shame, and I hope that doesn't happen."

Walsh, however, thinks he knows where it all went wrong.

"I wish we had a director who was a blond bombshell with big breasts who could sell the movie or something," he says. "I don't know what you need to sell the movie."

"You think it's directors with big tits and blond hair?" Roberts asks, almost incredulously.

"I do," Walsh says, solemnly.

"We could get a figurehead director," Roberts says, warming to the idea. "It's worth it if we can sell it. We'll hire a supermodel to pose as this supposed director. Matt, you may have solved the problem right here." Or not.