The Master Plan

ARON CAMPISANO

In an uncanny parallel to the life of Juno director Jason Reitman, I grew-up in the hotbed of Indie Film, Santa Rosa, CA, and my father is a Gynecologist.

Actually, I was kind of a photography prodigy way back when, and even though my high-school grades were like ehhh (I was a little too into riding my road racing bike), I got into NYU film school on the strength of my portfolio and the recommendations of a director and producer I worked for in LA in the late ’80’s. Schwarzenegger movies. i.e. “You shouldn’t drink… and bake!”

After NYU, I realized I was never going to win the Tour De France, and became convinced that Jean-Luc Godard would be making CD-ROMs if he were 57 years younger. So, I got into the then “multimedia” industry, eventually working as a producer for Disney Interactive and CNET. My specialty was CD-ROM and Internet video.

Note to self: DON’T MENTION CD-ROMS AGAIN.

In the later 90’s, it seemed everyone was getting rich on the Internet but me, so I left CNET to start my own company, which eventually became Filmspeed, one of the first online video distributors. I ran Filmspeed for about 5 years, and we eventually tanked because we were 8 years ahead of our time and grossly underfunded. Once, after an hour long pitch with a lot of dry erasing and random hand waving, I actually had a well-known venture capitalist bark at me, “You’re telling me you can play movies on the Internet?!!” Ah, the twentieth century.

Anyways, somehow I had gone from Art Film Dork to That Internet Video Guy, which never sat well with me (I also put on 25 pounds and shopped a lot at Banana Republic), so after I lost my ass at Filmspeed, I figured now was the best time to make that feature film I wrote in college. Of course, that’s The Master Plan. (“Ass” as in what Mary and Joseph rode into Bethlehem.)

I recently founded a new kind of digital film company, Alchemistic Microstudios. Our first feature film was The Master Plan, and I’m currently producing/directing a twentysomething “eco-thriller” called Adventure!!!. Next is B-3, a psychological sci-fi about a female bomber pilot.

More me, me, me:

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Or go crazy and send me a form email! (Yes, this thing works. Be polite, I get sensitive.)

• Have you seeeen LOL Cats?!