When he started out, the creator (writer, director, producer and narrator) of the poker documentary Drawing Dead: The Highs and Lows of Online Poker, Mike Weeks, was a newcomer to the movie making business. “(Drawing Dead) was my first film ever, so the expectations going into it were pretty modest,” Weeks admitted in an interview to Poker News Daily. “Honestly, though, I’ve never been more proud of anything I’ve ever done. I learned a lot, and hope I take my learnings into my next project someday soon.”
One of the first things that Weeks had to take care of was financing the film. Through a Kickstarter campaign, Weeks was able to raise about $4000, “but I had no idea how much it cost to make a movie,” Weeks admitted. He put out $25,000 of his own money for the completion of the film (the project started as a video on YouTube), then dropped another $15,000 to bring the project to DirecTV (Drawing Dead premiered last night on DirecTV’s Audience Network and is available for download from the movie’s website now). The results have been outstanding for Weeks and the film.
Drawing Dead has earned accolades at several film festivals where it has been presented. The movie won the Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 Vegas Independent Film Festival, the 2013 Oregon Independent Film Festival and the 2013 Seattle Truly Independent Film Festival. It has also drawn attention from the National Council on Problem Gambling (it was shown during their 2013 conference) and Weeks would like to get the Poker Players Alliance’s support for his film.
“I stated it in the movie that, if we can regulate the game and provide an outlet for people that struggle with addiction, poker can benefit society as a whole,” Weeks stated. “The movie makes a strong case for legalization and support from the PPA would be helpful.”
When it came to the creation of the film, Weeks admitted he didn’t know what direction he wanted to take. “I didn’t plan to have the story end up how it did,” he says. “It kind of just evolved as I learned more about Dusty (Schmidt) and Michael (Korpi, the two stars of the film). Going into it, all I knew is that I wanted to show both extremes, the success and the addiction. I wasn’t aware of the talents of both of them (Schmidt’s golf expertise and Korpi’s musical abilities). Their talents twisted the story and made me question where their lives would take them if poker wasn’t a part of their lives…that curiosity drove the film.”
Eventually a project has to come to an end, though. “John Lasseter from Pixar said it best,” Weeks noted. “He said, ‘Pixar films don’t get finished, they just get released,’” Weeks said with a laugh. There were things that he had to leave out, in particular some of Schmidt’s issues with online poker that he wrote about extensively on his blog.
“Dusty posted on his blog after the film ended that he was starting to experience some mental issues due to the amount of time he spent in front of computer screens,” Weeks said. “Online poker is mentally taxing, especially when multi-tabling…you make hundreds of decisions in a very short period of time, for 8-10 hours a day and, in some cases, longer. He was examined by the Amen Clinic and they identified online poker as a possible cause of the issues he was having. I wanted to explore this further but, after two years of working on the film, it was time to finish and I had to leave that out of the movie.”
With Drawing Dead now a part of the documentary world (and the poker community), what is the future for Weeks? “My aspirations are to do another project,” he laughed. “My hope is that one day I can use this film as a springboard into pursuing film-making for a living. Very few of us ever have the opportunity to support ourselves financially doing what we love.”