Happy New Year!
Hi, everyone. I mean every one of you who came through and made our Kickstarter project a success, making it possible for us to finish the live action portion of the TV Pilot. The really special part of our relationship is, for most of us, that it goes back for more than 50 years. You believed in us then and demonstrated that belief in trusting Jim, Roberta and me to the point that you, collectively, pledged $35,000 so that we could finish "Billy and the Bandit."
But still, this has been one long and rocky year! And when you’re swimming in the middle of it all, you can’t really tell what it is you’re swimming in.
Things happened and things didn’t happen. Example: We finished the Live Action portion of "Billy" in pretty good time AND it looks terrific. But, most everything else stopped, seemingly because of one legal issue or another.
We have had more "legal documents" drawn up than Kim Kardashian has had boyfriends. We’ve had literally dozens of conversations between THREE different Entertainment Attorneys AND members of our own LLC. Conversations where everyone seemed to agree on everything and all was a GO!
But then... Someone didn’t get what he or she thought that he or she should have and we were all shot down and back to square one.
So, in looking back over the year, the only items that were missing, the only items that without which the entire project would come to a screeching halt, were the Story Rights owned by Nancy Thomas and Darryl Bartlett.
But, to Darryl’s credit, he designed a "legal" document about three weeks ago, on his own, that released the long-awaited Story Rights. Now, because it was written by a "non-legal" person, we have to have a "legal" Entertainment Attorney check it out to make sure it holds water. It made me wonder why we didn’t use one of the dozen or more legal documents we already have.
Anyway, that’s where we stand. And, for the life of me, after eleven months, I STILL don’t know exactly what it is that Darryl and Nancy want so that they feel safe in releasing their rights.
But I guess that’s what happens when people who don’t know the law try to make up stuff on their own. And every member of our LLC, except maybe for James and Charles, has taken a shot at it and proven for all the world to see that we don’t know our butts from a hole in the ground when it comes to Entertainment Law, or ANY law for that matter.
Darryl fired our company attorney (I don’t know why) and I for one would like to have her back. We need someone who knows what they’re doing to take charge.
When you pledged your money to us through Kickstarter, I’m pretty sure you didn’t foresee the mess we’re in now. And if you had I’m sure you wouldn’t have pledged. I know I wouldn’t have.
You have all been beyond patient and supportive and I’m praying that, as a new year dawns, it will shed a clean, new light on the "Billy and the Bandit" project, issues will be resolved, and we will all remember exactly WHY we undertook this project to begin with.
And, even in the face of all this, I wish you a Happy and Blessed New Year and I pray that God will take the "Gimme!" out of the hearts of those who are always saying "Gimme" and replace it with a little more, "Here. Take this, and I hope it will help," just as all of you have done.
Gary Clarke
P.S. Please direct all your inquiries to the Contact Page at the following URL: