Friday 24 November 2017

Dave Sim, Film Consultant For Hire

16 March 07

Hi Al,

50 percent of nothing is still nothing, I’m afraid. For the last two years I’ve been working on a comic book that will be roughly 40 pages long when it’s done. After that I’ll probably do a graphic novel. Neither of these is intended to become a film, nor would I be interested in having them turned into films. Apart from that I work between four and six days a month on The Blog & Mail as a means of keeping the Dave Sim and Cerebus "brands" in circulation in the comicbook field (a Cerebus reader in Rhode Island then posts them one at a time on a daily basis). After that I can justify between three or four days a month on outside projects if those projects pay me a minimum of 500 dollars a day (based on a twelve-hour day). This is the reason that the best Marvel can hope for is a cover if they can get their rates up in the vicinity of $1,000 or so and why I can’t see doing any interior work: the rates are too low ($400 at the most) and it would take me three or four days (at least) to produce a top quality comic-book page.

If you want to hire me as a consultant on your film and give me a Co-Producer credit in order to create the illusion that you’re working on this with “the famous graphic novelist, Dave Sim” (which is really what this is about – the cachet of graphic novelists in Hollywood right now) then those are my rates. You send me your script with a cheque for $1,000 and I’ll give it my full attention for two days and make notes on it. When you get my notes that will give you a full month to decide if you want to buy another block of two days from me and what you want me to do with them, again, at the quoted $500-a-day rate.

If you want me to work on it for free with a promise of a 50-50 split of entirely theoretical profits, as you can see that wouldn’t really fit into my own situation and plans.

Sincerely,

Dave Sim

From "Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2007" -- available to download now!

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