A Response to Ken Levine

The top post on Reddit today was an interesting blog post from Ken Levine. The title, “I won’t give Zach Braff one dime,” piqued my interest, especially when I saw the author. Levine is sitcom royalty. I hoped upon reading the post that Levine would, as he normally does, offer insight or a new way of looking at a situation. He didn’t.

Levine successfully and articulately echoed the sentiment of many on the web regarding Braff’s Kickstarter campaign:

Rich, famous people should not be on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is for the everyman.

Kickstarter is for the undiscovered.

Rich, famous people take money from the undiscovered talent.

Kickstarter, like the Sundance Film Festival before it, is in jeopardy of essentially “selling out.”

Levine writes, “So someone who otherwise might have funded the Mobile kid instead will toss his coins to Zach Braff because he figures it’s a better bet and he gets to rub shoulders with show business.”

I should mention that I, also, will not be giving a dime to Zach Braff, but I would still like to politely disagree with Mr. Levine. And I’d like to do so from the standpoint of someone who’s hoping to successfully use Kickstarter in the future. And I’d like to do so from the standpoint of a fan, a consumer, and a TV nerd who makes YouTube videos.

Kickstarter is not Sundance. It’s not meant for the creators. It’s not meant for the art, or the careers of aspiring filmmakers or entrepreneurs. We like to think that the purpose of financial contribution is always the recipient, but that’s not the case with Kickstarter. Kickstarter is about the consumer. Kickstarter is about the fan.

“But Zach Braff is RICH!” they scream. So what? This isn’t about Zach Braff. This is about me, the fact that I love Zach Braff, and the fact that I want to fund this movie. That’s it. The idea that the money going toward Braff is money being taken from some poor sap in Mobile who’s shooting beautiful footage on a iPhone 3 is just as ridiculous. As a fan of Zach Braff, it’s not my job to worry about the aspiring filmmakers. It’s their job to worry about me. They haven’t won me as a fan. Braff has. Take my money.

In lambasting Braff in the name of artistic ethics, Levine dismisses the fan. Fans don’t care about the purity of filmmaking. They care about what they care about. Levine minimizes the very engine of show business and makes Kickstarter a battle between the indie filmmaker and the established. And those Zach Braff fans–the ones who follow him on Twitter and eat up everything he does–some of them haven’t spent money on a Kickstarter campaign. And when this goes through, they’ll be excited, and maybe they’ll return to Kickstarter and fund that Mobile guy’s project. It’s not a pie, Mr. Levine. It’s not this or that, not anymore, not in the era of the Internet and the new breed of superfan who understands that they must put their money where their mouth is.

We, the project creators, don’t get to decide what Kickstarter is. Kickstarter is decided by the backers, and that’s why it’s such an awesome and terrifying force.