LOS ANGELES, CA, July 8, 2003 – Meet filmmaker Peter Mattei, who only months after his film, LOVE IN THE TIME OF MONEY, premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival 2002, finds himself broke and out of work. In this wry exploration of his personal journey to find employment in the movie business, Mattei turns the camera on himself as he attempts to break into two very different segments of the business – pornography and Bollywood – the popular Indian movie genre.
These two half-hour films, THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE CLIVE McCLEAN and THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE KARAN ROJAN, premiere back-to-back on Monday, November 17 at 10:00 and 10:30 PM ET/PT on AMC. They each follow New York independent filmmaker Peter Mattei on his personal journey through the daunting challenges of making a living at his chosen profession.
THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE CLIVE McCLEAN follows Mattei as he connects with Los Angeles porn director and legendary Hustler photographer Clive McClean on the set of his latest BARELY LEGAL offering. Mattei observes a casting call, interviews young hopefuls, and watches a video shoot at the McClean ranch, taking meetings with various production companies, and the infamous Hustler founder Larry Flynt. What he learns is that success as a porn director in the highly lucrative and competitive skin trade is as elusive and challenging as it is in “artistic” films.
In THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE KARAN ROJAN, Mattei travels thousands of miles further west to Bombay to learn more about the Indian film industry and to try to get his own Bollywood movie off the ground.
After meeting with one of Bollywood’s most successful young directors, Karan Rojan, who offers tips on seeking financing, pre-production, choreographing outrageously complicated musical numbers and wrangling hundreds of extras, Mattei pitches his own Bollywood film idea–an epic musical based on Shakespeare’s HAMLET–to some of the biggest film stars and producers in the business. He discovers that Bollywood is not much different than Hollywood — every film needs a major star attached in order to get a green light.
These two specials are part of AMC’s new monthly series, THE AMC PROJECT, which presents unexpected and thought-provoking viewpoints on various aspects of life in Hollywood from a variety of acclaimed filmmakers commissioned to create story-driven films ranging from a half-hour to two-hour explorations.
THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE CLIVE McLEAN and THE AMC PROJECT: I WANT TO BE KARAN ROJAN are written and directed by Peter Mattei for Blue Raincoat Productions. The Executive Producer is Adam Brightman.
AMC is a 24-hour, movie-based network dedicated to the American movie fans. The network, which reaches over 84,000,000 homes, offers a comprehensive library of popular movies and an increasingly visible, critically-acclaimed, slate of original programming that is a diverse, movie-based mix of original series, documentaries and specials. AMC has more than doubled its original programming over the past 3 years and garnered many of the industry’s highest honors, including eight Emmy