I never really understood or cared what Zach Braff was trying to do with his Kickstarter campaign to make Garden State 2: Garden Hard With A Vengeance, because I wasn’t giving him a dime, and therefore couldn’t give two kittens’ queefs what other people did with their money. But according to the kid who removes the porn viruses from my computer, Braff’s campaign was a success and he has apparently changed the way that small-time filmmakers look at how they can get funding.

Well, except for Melissa Joan Hart, who, bless her heart, thought that she could raise money for a romcom entitled Darci’s Walk of Shame on Kickstarter, but ended up failing miserably. It might not have helped much that there’s a film called Walk of Shame coming out later this summer, but we’re not here to debate semantics.

If you ask Braff how his venture went, he’ll probably tell you that everyone thinks he’s awesome for doing it and that he’s a pioneer, like he recently told the guys on the Sirius XM radio show, Unmasked, the very same thing.

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This Zach Braff story is still in the news today, and I’m going to keep using this screencap to accompany it as long as it is. So yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter reported exclusively that Braff had found “financing” for his Kickstarted movie, Wish I Was Here, at Cannes. A lot of people were angry, thinking Braff had been misleading in asking fans to fund his movie to keep from having to take industry money with creative strings attached, and then seeming to turn around and take industry money anyway. It would’ve been easy, and more lucrative, for me to try to stoke outrage in that regard when I reported on it, but I didn’t, because it didn’t seem to me that Braff had specifically broken any promises, and because I’m terrible at making money.

Today Braff tried to clarify what kind of funding he’s getting from Worldview Entertainment. Basically, it all goes back to something called Gap Financing, which I imagine your mom knows all about. (*looks over at joke writers, gives confused shrug*)

— The story out there about the movie being fully funded by some financier is wrong. 

I have said on here and in every interview I’ve done on this project that the film would be fully financed from 3 sources:

• My Kickstarter Backers
• My own money
• Pre-Selling foreign theatrical distribution.

Those three amounts will bring us to a budget of around 5 to 6 million dollars.

— Nothing about the making of this movie has changed. This movie is happening because backers funded it. 

This film would not be happening without my backers. The traditional way is to have a financier put up the money and then sell the foreign rights. What I did, was to say to my fans, “If you and I provide the capital, we don’t need some rich dude dictating how we make the movie; we can then go sell foreign distibution [sic] and we’ll be all the way to our goal. Are you interested in that? So far 38,455 people have said yes.

— What happened today is that a financial company agreed to fill in the gap between what Kickstarter backers have funded and what I have put in, and what the movie will actually cost. Shooting could not happen without this. 

When you pre-sell foreign distribution, you don’t get that money for some time. So you need to go to a company to provide something called “Gap Financing”. They are essentially a bank. Loaning us the “gap” between what we’ve raised together and what we need to actually make the movie. I have no idea where a 10 million dollar number came from but it is wrong and a lie.

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Just to recap: Zach Braff put his proposed film, Wish I Was Here, up on Kickstarter. People freaked out, because Zach Braff is supposedly worth $22 million and maybe shouldn’t need Kickstarter (what does anyone “need?”). But his movie got funded anyway, and Kickstarter shot back that Braff’s movie, far from taking money away from other projects, was actually funded 63 percent by people who’d never used Kickstarter before, who went on to contribute $400,000 to other projects. So, a dick perhaps, but a net good in the end. End of story, right? Well, not exactly.

The brouhaha is poised to become even more kerfufflerous today with the news that Wish I Was Here has found a financier. Wait, what?

Zach Braff’s successful Kickstarter campaign for Wish I Was Here has helped the actor-director land a leading film financier: Worldview Entertainment.
Wish I Was Here has been generating headlines since April 24 when it became the latest film project to turn to the popular crowd-funding site for help. To date, the project has raised more than $2.6 million from more than 38,000 people, exceeding the $2 million goal.
Worldview will provide most of the financing for the drama, which will star Braff as a young man who, upon learning that his father is dying, must take a second look at his life and reconnect with his family. The budget is less than $10 million. With Worldview on board, a small percentage of the money raised will be returned in the form of a fee to Kickstarter, according to insiders.

Now, that might’ve been a little difficult to parse, but basically, Braff’s $2 million goal wasn’t the entire cost of the movie. The entire cost of the movie was closer to $10 million (even though the LA Times said $5 million a few weeks ago). Worldview Entertainment is stepping in to pay for the difference between the $2.6 million raised on Kickstarter and the final, near-$10 million cost of the movie. (The part going back to Kickstarter is just Kickstarter’s standard fee – they get paid when a project gets funded, that’s how it always works).

The question is, was Braff being disingenuous when he explained why he needed your Kickstarter money? Here’s his original pitch:

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Gang, just a short message from Ben to thank you for your support. You guys are like the lacy bra that makes us feel like the beautiful set of boobs we are. -Vince

Loyal Filmdrunk Readers and Frotcast Listeners,

Vince, Laremy and I wanted to thank you for making our Juggalo Vision Quest a reality. We are very excited/ terrified/ nervous/ anxious to get out to Cave-In-Rock, Illinois to completely immerse ourselves in the Juggalo world. 73% chance Laremy ODs on Faygo, 82% chance Ben finds a new favorite band, and 96% chance that Vince ends up in Juggalo Jail at some point.

We truly do appreciate all of your support to help make this journey and documentary a reality.

For this project, we are excited to be teaming up with professional video production crew Tall Tale productions to document the entire weekend. We will have a crew of 3 from Tall Tale to film and then edit this weekend into something hopefully watchable and maybe even enjoyable.

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Before there was a Veronica Mars movie and Zach Braff, Kickstarter had Detroit’s Robocop statue. People on the internet decided they’d buy that for a dollar, and eventually the project raised $67,000, $17,000 more than their $50,000 goal. Some in Detroit didn’t like the idea, but I’m assuming those people have all since been murdered or frozen to death in abandoned houses. I can only imagine that the reason a Robocop statue didn’t make as much as Zach Braff is because they asked for less. Also, to be fair, $67,000 is about $6 million in Detroit money.

In any case, the full-sized model has been complete by Fred “the Robot Man” Barton, and now it’s ready to be cast in bronze. So, just as soon as the team of vagrants steal enough copper wire and tin for the bronze, it should be ready to go. I kid, Detroit, I kid.

If you wonder why Robocop doesn’t have a gun, that was addressed earlier by the planners:

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