ALIEN BOY achieves another goal

Fans of the Mental Health Association know we’ve been preoccupied for the past year or so making a documentary film about the life and death of James Chasse.

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The film, ALIEN BOY, is directed by Brian Lindstrom, creator of streetwise documentary films such as FINDING NORMAL and KICKING. Our board members and supporters have been working with Brian and a crew of both producers and technical crew on over full ten days of shooting over the past year.

Today, actually tomorrow, we wind a big portion of the production up with our final formal on-camera interviews.

Since January Brian has prepped and interviewed, by our best count, over 65 different people, including attorneys, politicians, cops, witnesses, experts, friends, and comrades, all seeking the basic question of who was James Chasse and what happened to him?

If you’re in the dark at this point, click here to find out for yourself what happened to James Chasse.

These interviews are a costly – both in time and money – portion of our production schedule. Now they’re finished, Brian’s work shifts to editing. We expect to have a rough cut done in a couple of months.

Over $35,000 in cash has been raised to make ALIEN BOY from over 200 people, matched by over $100,000 in given and pledged in-kind donations. We can say with great pride that exactly 100% of the fundraising for ALIEN BOY has gone to the production of the film – a big fat zero in administrative costs. Unheard of.

More bookkeeping – about those 200 persons who made cash and in-kind gifts. Many – most – are not friends or philanthropists, or persons who had made prior gifts to the MHAP (zero maintains as the easiest number to factor). Our 200 donors come from all walks of life; a risk-taking foundation, a best-selling author, a psychotherapist, a teacher, a bureaucrat, an architect, a psychiatrist, an inventor, an investor, business-owners and homeless people. Each one was struck by the what happened to James, and the opportunity ALIEN BOY makes to tell that story to more people.

Most serious documentaries don’t get further than dreams without securing financing between $500,000 and $5,000,000 from film financiers expecting profits. They’re a long-shot, but an investment. We have no financing – and carry forward no debts. One hundred percent of the profits from the film go to the further efforts of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

So thank you. A big goal has been reached for and achieved.

Thank you.