Get Involved, Internet: Help finance a documentary about character actor Dick Miller
Every day, more and more creative types are turning to crowdsourcing to fund their projects. Get Involved, Internet aims to help them. If you know of a worthwhile project needing attention, let us know.
American Grindhouse director Elijah Drenner figures that, after a 55-year career spent on the margins of Hollywood amassing some amazingly random roles, Dick Miller is ready for his close-up. A bantamweight son of the Bronx, Miller went west in the 1950s hoping to become a writer and wound up as the unsung hero of the Roger Corman B-movie factory, where he was cast in multiple bit roles in drive-in classics like Apache Woman, The Wild Angels, X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, The Terror, The Trip, and the original Little Shop Of Horrors. Miller even eventually found a lead role as a talentless would-be artist turned murderer in the 1959 black comedy A Bucket Of Blood. (Endearingly, whether Miller was meant to be a Greek soldier or a Native American or a Napoleonic servant, he always came across like some guy bitching about the Yankees in a New Yawk deli.)
It's a good story, and now Drenner is raising money to tell it, aiming to finish a feature-length documentary, That Guy Dick Miller, about the instantly recognizable actor who's had such a surprisingly far-reaching career, working with everyone from Martin Scorsese (on New York, New York and After Hours) to Jonathan Kaplan (Heart Like A Wheel) to James Cameron (The Terminator) to his most ardent supporter since Corman, Gremlins director Joe Dante, who's used Miller in every one of his theatrical films. Donating as little as $5 will earn you a "Special Thanks" in the credits, and of course, there are plenty of other rewards—many of them from Miller's own personal collection of memorabilia. Those willing to give $200 or more, for instance, will be thanked with the original, autographed shooting scripts for his episodes of Police Woman and Bonanza, while anyone who forks over $1,000 can have dinner with Dick and his wife in Dick's very own home.