Transcript (en)

percent of the film with the debt profits, which in those days didn't mean anything. They still don't mean anything. The only thing that means anything is gross. The way the movie industry works and the way the accounting works, if you have net, you never see anything out of it. So that all stayed the same. But what I did do is I did go back because that all I have is a little deal memo that had these points on it. And I went back and did what nobody had done before, which is to negotiate all the other points. Usually they hand you a boilerplate script. Usually what they do is they hand you a boilerplate contract and say here sign this and they plug those little deal points in. I said well I've made these little deal points but now I want to go back and I want to go through the entire draft of the agreement and I want to change everything to be in my favor. And that's what I got out of it. The studio, they said what do we care? If the film's not going to be successful we don't care about the sequel rights. Licensing isn't worth anything. Nobody's been able to license anything. There's no money there. I was only doing it really to get t-shirts and posters so I could promote the movie because I was afraid they weren't going to do it. So they were giving away things that didn't mean anything to them, and in exchange I could have asked for a million dollars for the film and I didn't do it. So they thought they were getting a good deal. I thought I was getting a chance to make sure that I had a better shot at getting my second film made.