Horses and Chimpanzees

The average age of the crowd that went to see War Horse last Tuesday was surprising. Maybe it was the day of the week, maybe the time of year, I don't know. But I would say the average age was over 40.

When I premiered "Did I Say Thousand Island?" in Colorado, people of all ages came to see it, but I have been surprised over time that I get the most emails from middle aged folks who say they enjoyed the movie. One of the largest demographic today is women over 35, and that bodes well for a remake of this restaurant movie. Aren't most servers female? Yes. Which brings me to another interesting fact. Two of the most popular offerings the public has had about the restaurant industry in recent years have been written by men who have spent only 10 years in the industry in one city. I'm talking about the book Waiter Rant and the movie Waiting.

I thought Waiter Rant was very well written, and the content was, I am assuming, true for a New Yorker who is a waiter by default, but it certainly isn't true across the board. Too much research that I did when I was making my movie just disagrees. Many waitresses and waiters actually do enjoy their job, and I can bet more would if it was considered to be a "real job".

"Did I Say Thousand Island?" shows servers as the fun and smart people they are and as I have been told many times, is a realistic portrayal of the restaurant industry. That must be why it's been downloaded over 55,000 times in 183 countries so far. For a no-name movie made by basically one person (with awesome help  from friends) that's pretty good. Here's a link to the latest press release talking about the new project going on with the movie concerning water.

Why did I put chimpanzees at the top? When I saw War Horse, one of the ads at the beginning was for Chimpanzee, a documentary/story about a wee monkey, and if you go and see it during the opening week, Disney will donate a portion of the proceeds to the Jane Goodall Institute. That's the exact idea I have been proposing with Remake 4 Water for a long time, so see? It can be done. The difference is that my movie isn't mostly a documentary, it's a story. It's a story about everyone--everyone goes out to eat. Remake 4 Water...c'mon. Let's Do It!