by James L. Rubart, @jameslrubart
Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash
Back in the early 2000s my ad agency was running full force and one early spring I was down in L.A. shooting TV commercials for a client. One of those days I was chatting with our makeup gal’s boyfriend. I’d met him a few times and knew he was an actor.
“What are you working on these days?”
“A movie Tom Hanks and his wife put together.”
“Really? Tell me about it.”
Here’s the Story
Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks’ wife) saw a play that knocked her out. She and Tom decided they wanted to make a movie out of the show. Cost? They figured they could pull it off for around $5 million.
They shopped the major studios to get funding. Everyone turned them down.
Tom Hanks! They turned down Tom Hanks, one of the most (if not THE most) bankable stars of all time. Talk about a guy with clout. But it wasn’t enough.
So Tom and Rita came up with the money themselves. And took it back to the major studios. Guess what? Every studio in town turned the film down—
again.
They finally struck a deal with a tiny indie studio, IFC. The result? The film grossed $250 million bucks. (Around $400 million in today’s dollars.) Second biggest indie film of all time.
Five million turns into $250 million. Hundreds of millions of profit that could have gone to any studio had just one of them said yes.
Name of the movie? I’ll give you a few seconds to guess.
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding Presented by Gold Circle Films
(The actor I knew played the brother who wanted to be a graphic artist. Bottom left on the poster above.)
My Point
Sometimes it doesn’t matter who you are, known or unknown, or how good your story is. You might have to go it alone. Small publishers, big publishers, in-between publishers, they just won’t get it.
That’s not a bad thing these days. All the tools are there for you to go the Tom and Rita way. You just have to dive in.
How Do You Stand Up for Yourself When It Means Losing Everything?
Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy.
Then the bomb drops. Her dad was living a secret life and left her mom in massive debt.
As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop. The pressure to rescue her mom mounts, and Allison pours her fears and heartache into the journal.
But then the unexplainable happens. The words in the journal, her words, begin to disappear. And new ones fill the empty spaces—words that force her to look at everything she knows about herself in a new light.
Ignoring those words could cost her everything . . . but so could embracing them.
James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He thinks he’s still young enough to water ski like a madman and dirt bike with his two grown sons. He’s the best-selling, Christy BOOK of the YEAR, CAROL, INSPY, and RT Book Reviews award winning author of ten novels and loves to send readers on journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s also a branding expert, audiobook narrator, co-host of the Novel Marketing podcast, and co-founder with his son, Taylor, of the Rubart Writing Academy. He lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in Washington state.