While Woody Allen has no problem finding funding for his projects, the acclaimed director did have trouble understanding the newest way a filmmaker can get a project moving - crowd funding. So, Scrubs star Zach Braff, who successfully used Kickstarter to fund his new movie, had to explain to Allen how it works.
“By the way, I'm the one who explained crowdfunding to Woody Allen,” Braff said on the Sirius XM show Unmasked, reports The Wrap. “He's one of my heroes and I met him because we were talking about doing something together.”
Braff said that the two met the same day that news about his Kickstarter project broke. Fans have pledged over $2.8 million to fund Braff’s Wish I Was Here, which will be his first film as a director since Garden State.
“Everyone else in the room was like, 'Oh my God! Congratulations! That's insane! I can't believe it worked! No one thought it would work,” Braff explained. “And he clearly didn't know what anyone was talking about, so I started explaining it to him.”
He said that the Annie Hall director was “riveted” by the idea. They talked about it for 10 minutes, “with him asking all of these really intelligent questions and having this discourse and it was awesome. It was like, 'Oh my God! I can't believe I just explained crowdfunding to Woody Allen.'"
Before Braff told his story, the host brought up the fact that Allen has had to use foreign money for his films, noting that he doesn’t make movies in New York any more. His last eight films have been set in Europe. If crowd funding meant that Allen could make another Manhattan, “I would jump at that in a second,” Braff said.
Here’s Braff’s interview:
Allen’s next film is set in the U.S, though. Blue Jasmine was partly filmed in San Francisco. It hits theaters in July and stars Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin.