That headline is a bit of a gag but I have to get you to start reading.

News of the first two “releases” I put on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, which some of you might have seen: my wife and I are expecting identical twin girls this August. We are very excited.

This makes me highly motivated to promote the third new release, that crazy NC-17 movie I cowrote and coproduced. After a specialty theatrical release earlier this year, LUCKY BASTARD is now available for buy or rent in the U.S. and Canada on many VOD platforms including Amazon, Xbox, Sony Playstation, Vimeo, direct from our website via VHX, and numerous cable and satellite platforms including Time Warner and DirecTV. (A DVD will be released from Revolver Entertainment on July 1. Internationally, the only distribution at the moment is a download via our website.)

This is a very provocative film about a porn shoot gone horribly wrong: a young man is selected for a “date” with a porn star, but when he fails to perform, he is driven by shame and humiliation to commit the most horrendous acts imaginable.

I’ve been asked I would want to make a film about such sordid subject matter. The answer is the same reason I made a film music magazine and then several hundred soundtrack CDs—it was fun. It was interesting, creatively rewarding, we had great people involved, and made something that otherwise didn’t—and wouldn’t—exist. (Money comes and goes, but the work lasts.) Over the last 18 (!) years I’ve had a great time producing soundtrack CDs (and I’m still involved in projects for various labels), but I have always wanted to make movies. Alas, movies are incredibly expensive; you could spend years writing scripts or trying to get movie stars attached to your project without anything coming of it. This was an idea for a movie that could be made relatively inexpensively, without affecting the quality. With the help of soundtrack collector and B-movie wizard extraordinaire Jim Wynorski, who produced the picture for my writing partner (and director) Robert Nathan, we were able to make Lucky Bastard for less than some of the FSM CD box sets cost.

Promoting it, however, has been another matter entirely. In our naivété, we did not anticipate the amount of fear and rejection that would accompany our subject matter. In truth, the film is not suitable for children, and adults should be fairly advised of its content, which is why we submitted it for a rating and accepted the “kiss of death” NC-17. But there is no actual sex and the movie would not be out of place on late-night pay cable (where it will hopefully be broadcast).

You can visit our pages at IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd pages to see reviews, or if you’ve seen the film, review/rate it yourself (please do). The reviews have been all over the map (as we would expect for such provocative material) but we’re proud of notices in outlets like the L.A. Times and Village Voice. Stay up to date with news on the film at Facebook. 

Incidentally—and ironically—there’s no score! Only a brief bit of classical piano source music. The movie plays in “cinema verité” style. (This at least solved the problem of knowing so many gifted composers and not having to choose which one to hire.)

If your favorite movie of all time is from 1955, and you don’t like anything new or edgy or weird, and you especially would feel uncomfortable watching something with nudity, foul language and (simulated) sex—please do not feel any obligation to watch this movie on my behalf!

On the other hand, if you do like edgy and difficult material—this film culturally orbits somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto. I can honestly say there's some stuff in here you've never seen in a movie before.

I close with a personal appeal:

Some of you have been very kind and warm supporters since I was doing FSM as a Xeroxed newsletter in the early 1990s. I always felt a connection to you readers, and hopefully vice versa, and I feel like there is a certain amount of goodwill from having produced so many soundtrack albums of film and TV scores, both famous and obscure. I would happily use some of that goodwill now—in a particularly crucial time for my family—to ask you to check out Lucky Bastard and, if you like it, spread the word.

Also, by the way, the porn company office in the beginning of the movie is La-La Land Records—thanks MV and Matt!