10/04/2024
From the book I daydream will be written when Team Mean Time’s work is discovered by future generations, where I am a Melville-esque filmmaking figure who failed to achieve better than “obscure independent filmmaker” notoriety. At least this is what it will read like if my so-called career as a filmmaker maintains its luck and timing. I am working to change this. - Michael Mongillo
FROM THE “TURNING THE TABLES” CHAPTER:
"Being Michael Madsen," originally titled "Turning the Tables" by its director and co-writer, Michael Mongillo, was a feature film nearly lost to the ages. Mismanagement of the finished film property, compounded by the shady dealings of one of its many producers, led to the withdrawal of a wide-release distribution offer from Mark Cuban's Magnolia. Consequently, the mockumentary-form satire found distribution on Blu-ray, DVD, and pay cable through a forgotten company that quickly folded. The joke of a company that next acquired "Being Michael Madsen" licensed it to Netflix, only to deliver the festival version. It featured images and songs that had only been cleared for festival screenings, including the Eagles of Death Metal’s version of the Stealers Wheel hit, "Stuck in the Middle with You." This gross oversight led to the film being unceremoniously dropped from Netflix’s lineup. "Being Michael Madsen" languished in a minefield of legal and territory rights disputes for nearly a decade until Mongillo finally decided to post the film on his company Mean Time Productions’ Vimeo page on April 10, 2024. Mean Time, a company notably co-owned by the movie’s actual star, Jason Alan Smith (as paparazzi, Billy Dant), had unintentionally retained the film’s copyright. Predictably, the film’s various licensors never bothered to re-register "Being Michael Madsen" after Mean Time had assigned rights. Mongillo, always the archetypically tortured Catholic (as evidenced by his and Smith’s screenplay adaptation of the indie comix sensation, "Jesus Hates Zombies”) struggled with this decision. In the end, he justified the film’s Vimeo release as a necessary step to create some buzz to get his longtime passion project, "Meanest Man in the World," produced by someone other than himself.
From the book I daydream will be written when Team Mean Time’s work is discovered by future generations, where I am a Melville-esque filmmaking figure who…
