USA Projects

Dear Friends & Supporters: I'm very pleased to inform you that PIT STOP is premiering at Sundance! http://www.sundance.org/festival/release/2013-sundance-film-festival-announces-films-in-u.s.-and-world-competitions-/

We will be sorting out rewards and notifying y'all soon. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for supporting this film. It's such an honor to screen at this prestigious festival, but this wouldn't have happened with your help!

Apologizes about the typo from the previous update, which has been addressed. Totally had an ESL moment. It's WITHOUT. Not WITH.

It's one thing to meet our goal. It's another thing to meet and surpass our goal 12 days before our deadline. I remain awestruck. Thank you everyone! Remember: none of this is possible without you.

I'm in a watch ad! Okay, not exactly, but we got a new write-up from Arnold Wayne Jones at Dallas Voice: http://www.dallasvoice.com/test-8-1093432.html

I love to storyboard. This is the opening scene of PIT STOP, a wide shot of a gas station's convenience store. Please help us turn it into the real thing. We are now at 82%! A sincere thanks to all donors. We wouldn't be where we're at without you.

Please vote for PIT STOP to be indieWire's Project of the Week! It only takes a second: http://apps.facebook.com/my-polls/vsa0pzvt.

indieWire gave us the Project of the Day nod: http://tinyurl.com/3qap2b2.

Thanks to you, PIT STOP is currently 63% funded with 30 more days to go, so we're at our halfway mark to our deadline. This has certainly exceeded our expectations!

However, if we don't meet our goal at 100% by November 14th, we will earn nothing from what we've raised. Please help us spread the word by sharing the link http://PitStopTheMovie.com with your friends. You still have the option of increasing your pledge as well by logging into your profile at http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/login.

Thank you again. Your support really means a lot to us, and we will honor that by making a truly memorable film.

Sincerely,
Yen Tan
James M. Johnston
Kelly Williams
Eric Steele
Jonathan Duffy

My previous film CIAO has a strong following in China. Thanks to Kenny Lu, the webmaster who runs one of the most popular message boards for CIAO (http://www.qafone.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=91), here's our pledge video, subtitled in Mandarin! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLWse2oQA_Q

We have passed the halfway mark and have 35 days to go. If you've pledged, we wish to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Word-of-mouth is crucial to the success of this campaign, so please tell your friends and family. Remember: no donation is too small. Please help us get through the finish line:
http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/pit_stop

"At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see 'The Double Life of Veronique.' She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really – that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making 'Veronique' for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it. These are the best viewers. There aren't many of them but perhaps there are a few." - Krzysztof Kieslowski

I remember meeting an elderly gentleman who walked with a cane after a screening of "Ciao" in San Francisco. He had come straight to my screening after making a trip to the store, and he had a bag of groceries with him, which he sat on the floor before he spoke to me. I will never forget what he said: "Your film brought me back to the days when I really got to know the person I loved." It was then I really understood what Kieslowski meant: all the work, the pain, the struggles of making "Ciao" was worth it, just to take that elderly man back to those days. And in many ways, thanks to him and a lot of you whom I've met as a result of "Ciao," I'm more than happy to go through all the "suffering" again to make "Pit Stop" because I know that it'll be worth it at the end too.

But it's not possible without your help. We are currently 47% funded at United States Artists and there are 39 days left. Even if we reach 90% on November 14th, we still get nothing. We have to meet our goal at 100%, or it's nada. So if you haven't pledged yet (and for those of you who have, thank you again! Know that you can still increase your pledge as well, if you're compel to), and would like to do so, please help us now. You can donate as little as $1 (and if you're in the US, all donations are tax deductible), or at any other levels that come with cool rewards: http://PitStopTheMovie.com. Please also help us spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thank you for your support!

We're at 40%! And none of it is possible without your contribution, so THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your support! We still have a way to go, so please pass along our page link to your friends (http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/pit_stop). Word of mouth is crucial for us... that's how we got to most of you! In the meantime, here's a page from our PIT STOP look book. It's a sample of our cinematography influences.