Coming to a boo near you
Maine filmmakers behind “Back to the Beyond,” a film shot last year off the coast, have inked a deal that will see the movie on DVD in 75 counties and, eventually, streaming on Netflix.
Screenwriter Ralph DiBacco of Gorham said it took he and brother/director Kevin DiBacco of New Gloucester about 100 pitches to find a distributor for their first film, “Willows Way.” This time it took just 10 to land Maxim Media International.
“We were shocked it sold so quickly,” he said.
Filmed on Long Island, a 45-minute ferry ride from Portland, “Back to the Beyond” is a homage to the black-and-white, late-1950s series “One Step Beyond.” There’s a murderous sea captain, haunted grounds, paranormal investigators and things that bump in the night. Actors came from around Maine and New England. The project was featured in Weird, Wicked Weird last May.
With an official release date of June 6, the film will go to DVD and have limited foreign theatrical release, according to Ralph DiBacco, then move to pay-per-view (think Amazon.com Instant Video) and streaming (Netflix.) The last might be a year off.
“I’m looking forward to future projects,” DiBacco said, using this success to maybe not land A-listers but B. “This project was put together really quick, came out really good, but we really didn’t have any time to enjoy it. Between script, cast and shot it was bang, bang, bang.”
In November, the brothers will head with scripts in hand to the American Film Market in Santa Monica, Calif., to look for financing for their next film.
– Kathryn Skelton
Cyr back at work, happy to be alive
Drivers, watch those feet
Ben Lounsbury appreciated the reminder for bicyclists to carry ID out on the road. A cyclist himself, the Auburn man offered his own reminder, this one for drivers, about Maine law.
“The ‘3-foot rule’ says all motorists must leave 3 feet of space between their vehicles and bicycles when passing them,” Lounsbury said. “I would guess that one out of 10 motorists who passes me violates this rule, and one out of 100 leaves me less than 2 feet. They just don’t seem to understand that they shouldn’t pass, they should just slow down and wait, if they cannot pass safely.”
He said he’s gotten good at memorizing the license plates of the worst offenders and suggests other cyclists work on that reflex.
“You only get a few seconds to do it before the license is too small to read,” he said. “Police have been very responsive on the few occasions I have called them.”
– Kathryn Skelton
Still falling: e-tailer with local roots turns 2
Pricefalls.com, founded by a then-Bates College junior, and headed by a team of Bates grads, passed a few milestones this spring. Last year, CEO Elliot Moskow said the company had deals with 30-plus companies to sell on his Dutch auction-style website with 100,000 items for sale. Today, that’s up to 225-plus stores and 2 million products, according to spokesman Josh Weaver.
The company started out of Moskow’s apartment a few blocks from Bates in 2008 before going live online in 2009. It’s up from five employees to eight, still headquartered in Las Vegas.
Last year it had 1,500 people actively buying and selling. And now?
Weaver declined specifics, saying just that “the number of account holders on Pricefalls.com has increased well over 1,000 percent.”
“We are extremely excited about the tremendous growth we have displayed over the past two years,” Moskow said in a press release. “We will strive to continue to develop successful relationships with businesses across the country in order to provide shoppers with the best deals on the web.”
– Kathryn Skelton
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