SL: Hey! My name is Stevie Long. I’m currently working on a world-first Crypto-Defi funded movieI came to Hollywood as a young man, because hey, who wouldn’t want to be a movie star? Meet pretty girls and make lots of money while playing pretend. I appeared in a Budweiser commercial and a Toyota Tercel ad campaign in Hong Kong, but otherwise, I was just another guy knocking on doors. I’m a New Yorker and like to think I’m aggressive in a friendly way.
Movie studios are like banks. They loan out money to a production company to make a film. Just as banks know that Defi can replace them, studios will be obsolete someday, as filmmakers can get the money from tokens. So instead of studio execs getting rich, the audience will get rich by investing in the film’s token.SL: Now, what kind of movie am I about to make with crypto? Another indie about love? Nah, fuck that. I’ve made heartfelt indie films and big commercial comedies already.
What I love about crypto is that it is community-based. Much like making a film, it is a team effort. I was new to crypto, so others helped with basic things like setting up a telegram account! Of course, when it comes to film production, that is my expertise. Most of the stuff where I team up, I do it with Joel Viertel. He recently produced a movie called ‘The Banker’ with Samuel Jackson and Anthony Mackie.
Speaking of marketing, if there is one mistake I made, I didn’t know how to do a pre-sale and waitlist and all that. I could have probably raised 500 BNB right from the start, which would have given me a nice marketing wallet from the beginning, but I didn’t know about it, so I launched the fucking thing. Instead, I just spent money out of my pocket on advertising on Reddit and PooCoin and all the other places.
I mean, I’ve been working on HBO shows as a writer/producer, frustrated that I wasn’t directing an episode or the show I created didn’t get picked up. On the one hand, that sounds whiney — Don’t fucking whine — But that is a finger on the same hand of dreaming bigger and better all the time.
SL: Every time a new technology emerges, Hollywood resists it. I know that sounds counterproductive, but it comes down to monopolizing what they’re successful at. There used to be silent movies, and when “talkies” came along, Old Hollywood hated it. They had their projectors and their theatres and didn’t want to change. Why change what is making them money? But they had to adapt.
SL: When I was a young man in a lower-middle-class suburb, nobody told me that I could make movies when I grew up. Arts as a career would be laughed at. This might be the first time in history when we can encourage young people to pursue creativity as an actual career. It used to always be, “don’t pursue your dreams, there’s no money in it” — That didn’t stop me and people before me, but now we see that the world as we know it needs writers, videographers, and graphic designers.
SL: I’m hoping that funding the movie with crypto will bring crypto to the masses who don’t yet know about it. Hearing my story, I want to think that people in small towns around the world will say, “maybe I can open my restaurant using tokens since the bank won’t give me a loan”. Because I know there are people who would love to support local businesses, to be emotionally and financially invested in the new restaurant in their neighborhood succeeding.