Submit Your Application by January 31st, 2013
Earlier today, TheBlaze announced a new reality series being co-produced by TheBlaze, Vince Vaughn's Wild West Production, and Go Go Luckey Entertainment. The series will bring together twenty selected filmmakers from across the country to prove to a panel of expert judges that their project is worthy of the grand prize – financing and worldwide distribution for their feature documentary film idea. On radio this morning, Peter Billingsley, star of A Christmas Story and part of Wild West Productions, joined Glenn to discuss the new series.
"Thank you so much for doing this with us," Glenn said as he welcomed him to the program. Glenn explained that they had been working on getting the project off the ground for some time, and that both he and the other producers were inspired to create the series in order to find passionate filmmakers who could really inform and change minds.
Billingsley told Glenn,"We all were kind of at that same starting point where we were looking at a lot of the documentaries in journalism as well and saying where did real investigative journalism go? Where did people ‑‑ where are the people who are making movies that are actually changing points of view? Where are the people that care about something?"
"I think we were all having this idea at the same time and we said, well, what if we created a mechanism not only where we gave funding to people, which is so hard to come by to make their film, and real funding, but also create a system where we can vet ideas and filmmakers, have them compete for these ideas and, boy, we'll wind up with not only a new emerging filmmaker or someone who's made some films to win this competition but a great movie and we can set up a new system. And nothing like this has ever been done before."
Both Billingsley and Glenn agreed that documentary films too often come across as preachy, agenda-driven, and even conspiratorial. Those are not the kinds of films that will be evolving from "Pursuit of The Truth".
We're looking for great filmmaking, entertaining, truthful filmmaking that comes from good filmmakers that can get the message out to everybody," Billingsley said,
"This is not an American Idol kind of show where the first four episodes are watching someone fall on their face," he said. "We're not interested that. We're getting past that. We're here to do something special and make a movie."
Billingsley emphasized that people who have never made a movie will still be eligible, but they have to be able to show that they are capable of producing an amazing documentary film.
"You have to not only prove the validity of your idea but that you as a filmmaker have the chops to get it done," Billingsley told Glenn. "The winner ultimately after the ninth episode will get funding for their documentary which will be distributed on a worldwide basis."
Applications are currently being accepted from filmmakers of all walks of life to be contestants on the new television series, with a deadline of January 31st, 2013.
A team of experienced producers and executives will be hand selecting twenty of the most compelling contestants to compete on the show. Contestants will be asked to perform a series of tasks during the ten-‐week production period for our panel of expert judges. They will be asked to not only prove the validity of their idea for a documentary and but also their filmmaking abilities. They will either survive or be eliminated based on that criteria.
After the interview, Glenn invited President and CCO of TheBlaze Joel Cheatwood onto the program to further discuss the new series and revealed that Billingsley and Gary Auerbauch would both be judges on the show.
"You know, Peter is going to be one of the judges along with Gary Auerbach, both those guys have great documentary chops and really are leaders in the industry and Peter and Vince have one of the most successful film production companies in Hollywood. So we're really honored and excited to have those two as judges. And then we're in the process of recruiting probably three other noted sort of filmmakers, journalists who really will bring just a ton of credibility to the process."
"I want to give really props to Peter and Vince because this process has been arduous and not their fault at all. I mean, it's just the way things work in this industry. We have, you know, several partners and the process just, as lawyers get involved, takes forever. They have been dogged. I mean, they have just banded together and, you know, Peter and I have talked almost every other day and he just keeps saying 'Vince and I are so committed to this. We have to see it through'," Cheatwood said.
Cheatwood also revealed that Glenn would be playing a role in the series as well.
Interested filmmakers can submit their applications HERE.
