Brian Herzlinger decided to pursue a date with Drew Barrymore after he won $1,100 on a game show pilot with Barrymore’s name as the answer to the final question. Using the six degrees of separation policy, he got friends of friends to connect him to people in Barrymore’s circle. But this isn’t an inside Hollywood tale. In fact, it’s an outside Hollywood tale.
Herzlinger worked temp jobs in the industry but couldn’t move up. So he decided to make a film using a video camera bought from Circuit City, to be completed within the store’s 30 day return window. Along the way his friends, family and several celebrities chime in on his plan. His ex-girlfriend even calls, only to get jealous of his pursuit of an unattainable star.
I had my own six degrees moment with Brian during our phone interview. When he revealed he went to Ithaca College, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t found that out before. Not only did we share an alma mater, but he was only a year ahead of me. While we still haven’t figured out what class or extracurricular we had together, we bonded over the film school experience.
Was “20 Dates” an influence at all?
“No, not at all actually. None of us had seen it until we had just started shooting, and we decided to watch it just to see what he had done. We found out afterwards actually after that movie came out that a lot of the stuff that happened in that movie was fabricated. But we were very dead set on making sure that everything that happened in our movie was real and true. We were going to have the audience go along on the roller coaster ride that we went on.”
Should anybody with a video camera make a film?
“Well, if you want to make a movie, the technology is available to do it. There’s no excuse now. We shot this home movie on a video camera that fits in the palm of your hand. We didn’t have a microphone, didn’t have lighting equipment, didn’t have a tripod. We cut the whole movie on a laptop computer, so if you have a story that you want to tell, then there’s no excuse to not do it.”
Have you met a lot of aspiring filmmakers with big ideas like this?
“Yeah, [director/producer/editor Jon Gunn], [director/producer/editor Brett Winn] and myself went to film school together, so there’s a whole flock of us who moved out to LA to pursue the dream of being filmmakers. The thing we found out very quickly is that there is no set road that defines how you can actually go and become a filmmaker.
If you go to law school, you come out, you go to a law firm and you’re hired after they check you out. Same thing with a doctor. You go to medical school, you have a residency and then you’re a doctor. For a filmmaker, there’s no set road. That’s what happened with me, that’s what happened with Jon, that’s what happened with Brett. None of us expected this little movie to be the one that’s getting a worldwide theatrical release. The movie was a side effect of this journey of me just trying to make this lifelong dream come true. The only other filmmakers that we’ve talked to about the concept is friends of ours who went to Ithaca College with us.”
What does writer/director Bill D’Elia think of the finished film, since he’s a little down on your idea in the beginning?
“Bill D’Elia was the first person to stand up and cheer at the very first screening of the movie. He’s a really good guy. He’s got his opinions but the thing is that he got the journey. That’s the same response we’ve had actually with audiences around the country who’ve seen the movie, where they come up and they feel inspired by our journey. They come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for making the movie. You’ve inspired me to follow my own lifelong dream.’
The movie is about me trying to get this dream date with Drew, but more than just whether or not I got the date, it’s about the journey, about the ride. And people identify with the quest because it’s a universal theme. Everybody’s had a crush on somebody that’s seemingly unattainable, that somebody that was on the poster on your bedroom wall growing up that you dreamed about meeting. Even Bill D’Elia I’m sure has that, so once they see it they love it.”
