Paper Boys
Feature Film Going To AFM and NATPE
by Yayoi Lena Winfrey

Paper Boys is a film about a team of young men selling newspaper subscriptions in Atlanta. Like a family, they all have their own particular problems; one of which is plagued with the knowledge that his girlfriend committed suicide in rehabilitation. False bravado and hyper-sexuality amplified by drugs and painful circumstances provides a recipe for juxtaposition of comedy and potential tragedy.

The winner of four Accolade awards, Paper Boys is being taken to North American’s biggest film and television markets, the American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica and to the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) in Las Vegas.

Writer and director Bryan E. Hall of Aware Productions discusses how he wrote, directed and produced the picture.

Q: Have you ever had a paper route or sold newspaper subscriptions?

A: My experience as a door-to-door salesman started when I was nine years old. I was very good at it. I learned you get away with a lot more when you’re young and cute, than when you’re old and ugly. One of the sub-themes we hit in the film is there’s a relationship between being young and beautiful, and being successful in the things that aren’t really that important. You’ll get that first job or that first opportunity in business for no other reason than you’re cute and charming, and secondarily, they’ll see if you have any skills later on. In fact, those sales organizations are full of cute, young people who happened to be given a chance.

Q: Where did you get the story idea?

A: Originally, it was purely autobiographical, a true story. I wrote it 20 years ago. I was the Atlanta Journal’s sales manager, and it was based on a kid that worked for me who killed himself. When someone kills himself, you find out after the fact that it should have been obvious. If everybody had been able to combine their thinking at that time, we would’ve known that it was coming. This boy had issues with being bi-curious, using cocaine, and problems with his stepfather. A lot of the dramatic elements are from that true story.

In the film, we change some of the ills of history by inflicting our corrections. It's unheard of having a gay character in that situation not killing himself. In every film, the very discovery of being gay is enough to kill yourself over, especially after the introduction of AIDS. It was almost a subgenre of film that someone who was gay dramatically increased their chances of getting AIDS. That was the thing 20 years ago. Maybe the sub-biological, sociological imperative has changed since that script was written. Now, it's possible the lesson that people learn is that though you may think this is something somebody should kill himself over, it’s ridiculous to actually kill yourself because you might be gay or have HIV these days.

Partly related to this project, I became motivated to do some public service work for teenage suicide prevention. I started a national public service campaign for the U.S. Jaycees called Don’t Give Up with Will Wheaton from Star Trek, the Next Generation.

As writers, we write of things that we know. The script was absolutely a product of a passion primarily from a personal experience. The opportunity to work with sales as a metaphor is really a great dramatic opportunity. You haven’t seen much of using sales as a metaphor in a coming-of-age film. There hasn’t been a film that treats a door-to-door sales crew or organization as if it were a gang or family.

Q: How did you become a filmmaker?

A: I majored in journalism and political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. But I had a tremendous interest in film and wrote a couple of screenplays, so I applied for USC graduate film school. I was accepted and nothing else really mattered after that. If you have an opportunity to go to a very selective program, then you borrow the money and you go. I worked with a lot of amazing writers and directors, not only screenwriters, but people who have written novels and plays. It was a real pleasure to learn from people who absolutely knew what they were doing. I was satisfied with playing the role of the apprentice for a lot of years.

Q: What were some of the challenges you had making Paper Boys?

A: The real miracle of independent film is when all or most of the participants are working on deferred payment or are profit-sharing participants in the project. It’s very easy for people to have the self-perception that they’re working for free, but the truth is every single person in our film was effectively a co-owner, and we will all benefit from the ultimate sale of the project. They believed in the project, but not because they were being paid a lot of money. I never met anyone that did a project of this complexity with this many people involved and be able to pull it off as a 100% deferred project.

Q: Some of the scenes are pretty intense. How many takes did you usually do?

A: We had the real fortune of having a long casting process. The people working together on the project got to know each other pretty well before we even started shooting. To a certain extent, they were able to develop method acting before shooting. It saved a lot of time as they internalized characters as a result. We didn’t really need a whole lot of takes on most scenes. It's a lot better to do it right the first time. I apply that to all areas of life. People too often think the first several takes are the rehearsal.

For such intense performances, if we‘d done them three or four times, by the time you get to the fourth time how many tears do you have left? How much passion do you have left? All the actors were very emotionally involved, and we had a very good shooting ratio. As a result, we finished on schedule. We only had 12 days of principal shooting with a lot of locations and set-ups.

Q: What advice do you have for aspiring independent filmmakers?

A: Don’t quit! You’re not a loser until you volunteer to lose. The sales orientation from that early part of my life has been my operating system. It has helped me convert my writing into fruition. You can be the greatest artist in the word, and be so talented, but if you don’t have those basic sales skills, chances are you're just not going to get your message out.

Both the good and bad thing about film is that you can’t possibly do it alone. If you have a pretty good $5,000 camera and relatively limited lighting equipment, and you’re able to pull together people willing to give you their time and talent as an investment, then there’s no reason you can’t make a film. Technology has made that possible for a lot of filmmakers.

Q: How has winning Accolade awards helped?

A: Obviously, emotionally, we get some recognition. Even if you’re in an awards competition, it doesn’t put you head to head with $20 million movies or pre-distributed, pre-funded films. But it lets you feel there might be some chance to see how good your film is within constraints. It certainly opens a lot of doors. For example, I don’t have any problems getting a script read, but the quality of the people that read your script is dramatically enhanced by the credibility of winning an award gives you. I don’t want to name names, but for my next project I have had my script read by seriously accomplished people that I want to work with.

Q: Anything else?

A: The Accolade Competition is being very helpful by including us as one of the Best of Accolades films (at AFM and NATPE). The organization wholeheartedly supports promoting us for what they believe is excellence.

I’m trusted with a multi-million dollar budget on my next film as a result of that attention. It retroactively results in this film getting some attention. It all feeds itself. Collaboration includes everyone, not just people who made the film, but every one that makes it possible for that film to get an audience.