The Miracle of San Blas - Part 19
Leslie, my co-executive producer, phoned yesterday to let me know he had heard from the president of the organizers of the San Blas Marathon that the organizing committee had decided not to give us permission to use their marathon and/or any of their trademarks in our film after all, unless we first agree to give them 10% of any profits the movie may enjoy, something we're not willing to do.
The name of the marathon is irrelevant to the story, so I've been working on a new fictional one, as is the town in which the story is set. Coamo (pronunciation guide: koh-AH-moh), the town in which the San Blas Marathon is held annually, is an hour away from the San Juan Metro Area, so either we would have had to transport cast and crew back and forth, which would have lost us at least two hours of every shooting day, or we would have had to put up the cast and crew in lodgings near the town, which would have run up the budget significantly.
The mayor of a town called Caguas (pronunciation guide: KAH-gwass), which is only fifteen miles from the Metro Area, is very interested in attracting film productions, so Leslie will be contacting him soon. In our favor is the fact that last year Leslie was involved with the production of a film featuring a performer called Daddy Yankee, currently the most popular proponent of reggaeton in the world, which was shot entirely in Caguas and with which the city government cooperated fully.
We are both saddened at the organizers' decision, as we believe the film could have contributed to putting the marathon back on the map -- over the past few years, it has been losing fame and prestige to a 10K race in San Juan -- as well as to promoting tourism to the town itself, and Leslie, who was born and raised in Coamo and was one of the founding members of the social fraternity which created and continues to run the marathon, had seen the film as a way of making an important contribution to his home town.
In conclusion, then, Leslie feels, as do I, that this apparent setback may actually be a blessing in disguise, since we were going to have to recreate the marathon scenes no matter where we wound up filming, and Leslie believes that shooting the film closer to home will allow us to cut several hundred thousand dollars from the budget.
The name of the marathon is irrelevant to the story, so I've been working on a new fictional one, as is the town in which the story is set. Coamo (pronunciation guide: koh-AH-moh), the town in which the San Blas Marathon is held annually, is an hour away from the San Juan Metro Area, so either we would have had to transport cast and crew back and forth, which would have lost us at least two hours of every shooting day, or we would have had to put up the cast and crew in lodgings near the town, which would have run up the budget significantly.
The mayor of a town called Caguas (pronunciation guide: KAH-gwass), which is only fifteen miles from the Metro Area, is very interested in attracting film productions, so Leslie will be contacting him soon. In our favor is the fact that last year Leslie was involved with the production of a film featuring a performer called Daddy Yankee, currently the most popular proponent of reggaeton in the world, which was shot entirely in Caguas and with which the city government cooperated fully.
We are both saddened at the organizers' decision, as we believe the film could have contributed to putting the marathon back on the map -- over the past few years, it has been losing fame and prestige to a 10K race in San Juan -- as well as to promoting tourism to the town itself, and Leslie, who was born and raised in Coamo and was one of the founding members of the social fraternity which created and continues to run the marathon, had seen the film as a way of making an important contribution to his home town.
In conclusion, then, Leslie feels, as do I, that this apparent setback may actually be a blessing in disguise, since we were going to have to recreate the marathon scenes no matter where we wound up filming, and Leslie believes that shooting the film closer to home will allow us to cut several hundred thousand dollars from the budget.