North Carolina expatriate Jacob Hatley may not be living the dream just yet, but he is living the Hollywood shuffle -- the hustle of trying to sell your movie. The project he's currently shopping is "Ain't In It For My Health," a very unconventional documentary about Americana icon Levon Helm (a project that began when Hatley directed this video). For more on that, see the story in Sunday's paper.
Meantime, Hatley is already pondering his next project, which he says will be a genre thriller to be set as well as filmed back here in his native state. And he has very sensibly figured out that, if you're not too attached to the idea of making gigantic sums of money, you can have a fine time making movies.
"Most people have to get over the idea of getting rich in this business," he says. "Some people do, but most don't. As long as you can find a way to do it and not go broke, you're winning. It's like the '70s drive-in circuit in the South. They'd drive one print of a film around from one place to the next every weekend. Genre films, no one cared what they were about so long as they had a car chase. They spent very little and made very little. That's the way to do it."
