Ten years ago I cowrote and executive produced a very strange indie thriller called Lucky Bastard.
It’s a found footage thriller (to us, a drama and social commentary) about a porn shoot that goes horribly wrong when an incel (the “lucky bastard”) brought in to have sex with a porn star gets humiliated and goes on a killing spree.
Yeah, it’s that insane.
This movie was ahead of its time—the term “incel” hadn’t even been coined yet!
For me, it was an art film, a way to criticize our stupid culture and make something super cheap (barely six figures)—and learn how to be a filmmaker and producer.
When we wrapped, I thought we caught lightning in a bottle. I mean, it came out, artistically, exactly like what I imagined.
I thought, holy crap, we could have the next Blair Witch here!
Needless to say, I was naive and delusional.
It was not until we started to show it to sales agents that I realized that due to the content and inevitable ratings problem, the movie might in fact be unreleasable.
And yeah...it ended up losing money and being barely distributed.
To this day, I am super proud of my director, friend and cowriter, Robert Nathan, and the brave cast (Don McManus, Jay Paulson, Betsy Rue, Catherine Annette, Chris Wylde, Lanny Joon, Lee Kholafi) and hardworking crew who gave their all. And thank you to my pal Jim Wynorski who came in to produce it on a super tight budget.
But I don’t talk about it a lot because it lost money, was a very frustrating and demoralizing experience...and most of all, I don’t want people to think I’m some sicko with porn on the brain.
In fact, I was so concerned that it would be misconstrued as actual pornography, I submitted it to the MPA (then the MPAA) and accepted the “kiss of death” NC-17 rating.
Which predictably killed it commercially, as I explained online.
So it was really tough life lesson. I felt like I let the cast and crew down, and my family (given the personal and borrowed funds I put into it), and, of course, my loyal FSM audience—who politely kept to themselves that they must have thought I lost my mind!
Live and learn.
Back in the day, the movie saw a limited theatrical release (which I had to pay for—I was a total idiot!) and got mixed reviews, but very polarizing ones.
If maybe two reviews had gone the other way (negative to positive) we would have a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So close!
I know people who have made “real” movies with real budgets, and their RT scores are in the teens (not to rub it in). So for our micro-budget movie about porn to be over 50%, I’ll take as a win.
Actual audiences—well, they tend not to like it.
But not everybody: a few people love it, like really love it.
Most people are like, “eh, two stars.”
And then maybe a third of the reactions are like, “This is the worst movie in the history of the galaxy.” I mean, they hate it so much they are furious!
Here’s a recent fan of ours:
So it’s kind of cool to provoke that kind of reaction...?
I remember in 2014, iTunes would not carry it—and that really killed its chances.
Forget about cable, or Netflix, or any ancillary revenues: it would never be treated as a legitimate movie.
I thought the guy at Apple who made the decision, who I personally lobbied, was a hypocritical prick. I really don’t hold grudges—but that one, I do.
This was right when Blue Is the Warmest Color came out, and was rated NC-17. So it’s just total hypocrisy. Our movie was different, of course, and confusingly looked like an exploitation film—but if we had a movie star in it, or a celebrity “presenter”/producer, we would totally have been taken seriously. So frustrating!
For a while, Lucky Bastard was so forgotten that I just put it on my personal YouTube page—where it rapidly racked up 20 million views.
I was like, wow, we found our audience!
Alas, when I went to the stats, most of the views came in the middle of the night from puritanical third-world countries who ban Pornhub. So, yeah, it was just being “exploited” for the nudie scenes...yuck.
When somebody complained on YouTube about the content and it got taken down (a “community strike”) I didn’t bother to fight back.
But a few months ago, totally unexpectedly, after years of Amazon refusing even sell or rent it streaming—they accepted it on Prime.
I was even afraid to ask the distributor, “Hey, how did this happen?” They said they didn’t know either.
There are, confusingly, at least two other movies with the same title, one of them a gay romance that came out a few years before ours. Maybe people are confused?
Now, folks, I am NOT asking you to watch this movie on Prime!
But it is there, and so its “view counts” (ratings and reactions) are creeping upwards on IMDB and various movie sites. Lucky Bastard lives!
These are the recent ratings on Letterboxd:
I think it’s hilarious that, back to back, somebody would rate it five stars, and somebody else one star—and both were motivated to leave a written review.
So, congrats to us!
One last anecdote that is sort of funny. My kids (twins, almost nine) are watching movies now, and they ask about the ratings. They don’t like to see movies that are too scary and violent—very thoughtful.
They asked one time, “What’s above an R?”
I said, “It’s called NC-17. Nobody 17 or under can see it.”
“Do people make movies like that?”
I was like, “Uh...I dunno.”
True story!