Don't Wait for Permission: Our 7-Year Journey from First Draft to Global Release
How we made and self-released Guacamole Yesterdays (watch today!)
After 7 looooooong years, Guacamole Yesterdays, our grounded sci-fi love story, launches today on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, and Google TV.
Here’s a timeline of how it all came together:
2018.
The first draft was written in January 2018. Coming off the production of our first feature, This World Alone (which was shot all outside, complete with sunburn, yellow jacket stings, and bugs in our eyes), we decided we wanted to tell a story that takes place all INSIDE. We started with the question, “Can you tell a compelling story that features just two people in one house?”
Director Jordan Noel and I were influenced by our own conversations about our past relationships, how we deal with past traumas, grounded sci-fi films like The One I Love and The Discovery, and stories we read about memory-tweaking technology and the fallibility of memory.
2021.
We spent years working on the script (~20 rewrites before the start of production and many during), attaching talent, and trying to raise the funds for this film. We kept hitting the roadblock that no one wanted to take the risk on a new film until we saw a return on our first.
Then, finally, a guy I had never met before reached out via email. He said that he had heard me on a podcast where we were promoting This World Alone and was intrigued by the pitch for the next film. I sent him the script for Guac, and, after reading it, he offered to fully fund production for the film.
We were already neck-deep in pre-production, so we were able to hit the ground running and start shooting just three months later.
2022.
Our lead actor ended up having a scheduling conflict a month before we started shooting, so we brought on Randy Havens (Stranger Things) just two weeks before production began.
The shoot itself was 14 intense days shot in a small house, dealing with COVID-protocols, scheduling issues, accidentally deleted footage, and being shut down due to a blizzard, but we were thrilled with the performances and the footage and knew we had something special on our hands.
2023.
Post-production was a year-long process, putting in the work to make it the best it could be. We reached out to fellow filmmakers for notes and went through countless revisions.
In November, the film premiered at its first festival. Over the next few months, we screened at 11 festivals around the country and took home a few awards:
🥑 Best Feature – Georgia Film Fest
🥑 Best Feature – South Georgia Film Fest
🥑 Audience Award – Phoenix Film Fest
🥑 Best Genre Screenplay – Nashville Film Fest
2024.
When it came time to release the film, we talked with a number of interested distributors, but we just couldn’t make the numbers work. We kept hearing the same story over and over again: no minimum guarantee, vague marketing promises, and unfriendly revenue shares. We knew there had to be a better way.
That’s when our investor challenged us to look at our release differently: “You’re not just making a film, you’re launching a business.” So with that in mind, we started down the journey of taking it into our own hands, bringing on additional money for a marketing spend, partnering with Bitmax for platforming, and attaching Smarthouse Creative to help us get the word out through PR and online ads.
A big part of that strategy was to build our own audience, one person at a time. We embraced our punk rock music roots and hit the road for a 13-city self-booked theatrical tour, getting to share the film with hundreds of people in crowded indie theaters (our favorite way to watch a movie), and created additional revenue drivers like merch sales.
It’s been an awfully long journey. But today is what we’ve been working towards: Guacamole Yesterdays is officially available to rent or buy across the globe. You can watch it right now on all major platforms.
How You Can Help
This is a tiny indie film with a tiny indie budget. But word-of-mouth can do what no marketing budget can. If you want to support the film, here’s how you can help:
🥑 Watch the film
Rent or purchase on Apple, Amazon, YouTube, or Google TV. The more we can ramp up views in this first week, the more likely we’ll hit the algorithms on these platforms and get better placement.
🥑 Leave us a review
We are crazy close to getting an average score on Letterboxd (currently sitting at an astounding 4.2 stars based on our own math), and every rating helps (even if you just leave a star rating without a review!)
🥑 Share it with your people
Indie film lives or dies by word-of-mouth. If you end up connecting with the film, sharing it with friends makes a massive difference for a film of our size.
HERE are some assets if you’re interested in posting about it!
Thank You
We’re so, so grateful to everyone who came together to make this film and release possible - the cast, the crew, the festivals, the tour venues, the audiences, and YOU.
This all feels like a giant gamble. We want to believe that the cream rises to the top. We want to believe there is a model for sustainable indie film. We want to believe we can find the right audience, even without the giant marketing spends of the majors. But at the end of the day, we’ve made a movie we’re proud of. Audiences across the country have already connected deeply with it.
Every step of this thing has accomplished what we set out to do: build a passionate community around an art form that encourages empathy.
Watch and share at guacamoleyesterdays.com