FINANCING PLANS for Tom Noonan movies

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If you'd like to see a limited partnership offering for my next movie please email me thru feedback at the top of the page and we can start a conversation.

PRODUCTION FINANCING HISTORY

I self-financed my fiirst movie, WHAT HAPPENED WAS... I used my money made acting and writing movies for Hollywood. The budget for the theater production of WHW was about $24,000 (almost none of that was recouped - about 500 people saw the play during its 5 week run and most of them were given free tickets.
It cost about $47,000 in cash to shoot WHW. Post-production was another $75,000 - this included all deliverable costs (I owned my own video editing system and a digital sound editing system which are not included in the budget - having these saved well in excess of $100,000 - I bought these units in 1991 and 1992 in anticipation of making a movie - I thought if I put all this money into equipment it would force me to make a movie - it worked I think). The crew worked on 100% deferrals. At this date they have been paid about 50% of their salaries (pretty good considering the history of most low-budget deferral payouts). This money came from the sale of the film for theatrical and video distribution.
I did receive an NEA grant of $17,500 which was plowed back into the post-production. PANAVISION gave us the camera package for the two-week shoot schedule which would have cost us nearly $40,000 if we were to rent that equipment.
I have recouped none of my cash investment in the film but I did receive the same 50% deferral payments totalling about $10,000 for my writing, directing, and acting contributions.

THE WIFE cost about $40,000 to mount as a play (under the title: WIFEY) of which I recouped about $6,000 from tickets (the play was sold out for most performances).
The movie budget was beyond my reach personally so I went out and asked everyone I knew for money. I did receive promises for some of the money but not nearly enough to finish shooting. So we were faced with two options: a) shoot the movie in a very low-cost format like video or, b) just dive in and start shooting with the money I had in the bank which was only enough to get us through the first 8 days. The crew on this job were offered salaries - we didn't feel we could ask people to work for nothing twice. We were trying to sell or mortgage our house during this period but that was a slow and undependable source of funding.
In the end we opted for the second option and plowed ahead letting everyone involved know that we might not make it through to the end. During our first week (of a three week shoot) CIBY 2000, the French film financiers, came to the rescue and took over the entire budget (I'm contractually bound to not reveal the budget of the film but it was about twice what my first film was. This was due to mostly to a longer shooting schedule - twice as many actors - and shooting on location with a crew of 25). In exchange for taking over their financing of the film I had to surrender all rights to my work, including the copyright to CIBY 2000. But faced with the possibility of having no film it seemed like a great deal to me and I thank CIBY to this day for their support.