City producer eyes the big time with doc about Danny Trejo
Edmonton’s Scorgie draws attention from major studios for story of star’s rise to fame
Edmonton documentary film producer Adam Scorgie has had numerous successes in his career, but his new film on American actor Danny Trejo, a deathrow criminal turned Hollywood action star, is about to take him to an elite level.
Scorgie and his partners are closing in on a Hollywood film distribution deal for Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo.
Such a deal will represent a zenith in Scorgie’s career, one that has seen him rise from a strip bar owner in Kelowna
(he inherited the bar from his deceased father) to the producer of such films as Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story and The Union: The Business Behind Getting High.
The Edmonton premiere of Inmate #1 is Tuesday at the Metro Cinema, and for any young filmmakers in attendance, Scorgie will be on hand to answer questions about how to make it in the film business.
Much of it has to do with a skill for telling interesting stories, but it’s just as much about Scorgie’s growing mastery of the complex private and public funding it takes to make a film. On his first documentary in 2007, the then-inexperienced Scorgie made all kinds of mistakes and found himself missing out on tens of thousands in funding and in such a deep hole financially, including owing his parents, it took him seven years and working three outside jobs to make his next film.
“You seem like a crazy guy trying to do a documentary,” he says of that time. “Everybody is like, ‘Why are you doing this? It makes no money. You spent all your money. You owe your parents money. You’re a failure. You’re seeing everybody else have success in your life. And you’re chasing this thing. OK, your film won awards and it went around the world, but you yourself are not benefiting from this, right?’ But what I did get was my business degree on how to make films and how to do them correctly. That was the real value of my first film.”
Putting together financing for a $500,000 to $1-million documentary is all about procuring both private financing, and federal and provincial grants and tax credits for labour costs.
“All this paperwork, I hate it, but I know I have to get it done in order to do the fun part of getting into production and seeing your work on airlines or on Netflix,” he says.
“If you don’t know the money side of it, you can’t produce.”
Scorgie does all the financial work himself, proving anyone can do it, he says. “I was someone that barely graduated high school in math. I was considered the dummy in school. And now people are like, ‘How do you do this financing?’ It’s because I’m passionate about it. I’ve taught myself how to do it.”
In his negotiations with his production crew, Scorgie favours opening up his budget completely, so everyone knows who is making what and who is responsible for exactly what job. He learned early on that if you don’t spell out roles clearly, misunderstandings are common.
But if everyone realizes that no one is getting rich, everyone is being treated and paid fairly, Scorgie says, they’re willing to go above and beyond on a project.
Most of the funding comes at the end of a project and is paid over time, so Scorgie has to take out a loan with Alberta Treasury Branches to finance each project.
“I brought this up with some of my team in the past, they’d get a little disgruntled when we were going over the budget and be like, ‘Well, why do you get all these fees?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, you see this $700,000 budget? I brought all of it. Not only did I go pre-sell it, but I’m also interim financing. I’ll cut my fees in half if you want to take out a loan for $250,000 and you want to gap finance ... And you go put it on your line of credit and you make sure all the tax credits hit and you make sure you don’t go offside and get denied.’ And they’re all like, ‘No, we’re good, we’re good. These fees seem very fair.’”
If Scorgie does everything right, he can finance a documentary through Canadian sources, then make some profit by selling the movie internationally, which brings us back to the pending studio deal on Inmate #1. He’s in final discussions with several major studios for the rights.
“It is a dream come true for us,” Scorgie says of a prospective deal. “It’s going to skyrocket my team’s career.”