Revenge of the Nerds

By: Adam L. PenenbergWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:11 AM

Arin Crumley and Susan Buice were just art squids with a handful of credit cards, a digital camera, and very patient parents. Now they have a (long) shot at the big time. How the digital wave gives power to the little people and reshapes the way movies reach the world.

Crumley and Buice in their Brooklyn flat.

In the end, of course, Hollywood might respond to the threat posed by Buice, Crumley, and the rest by doing what it did to indie film in the 1990s: co-opting it. The Web could simply become a farm team, a place to scout talent. It seems a safe bet that someone at News Corp., which paid more than half a billion dollars for MySpace, is watching the site closely for the next breakout star, whether of film, music, or anything else. (Even this scenario should give distributors the shakes, however.)

Meanwhile, filmmakers like Buice and Crumley are on their own, their Nora Ephron denouement deferred. Their 450-square-foot loft in a former factory building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, is awash in digital videotapes. An archaic gas stove is set right inside the front door; their bedroom is a mattress stuffed into an alcove, secreted behind a red curtain. A whiteboard is covered in notes, an almost endless to-do list. Two Apple monitors bathe the room in light.

The pair have racked up $54,000 in credit-card debt and are so broke that tonight's dinner consists of almond-butter sandwiches, which they'll eat on their way to the Apple Store in Soho, where they are scheduled to give a lecture. Still, asked if they would accept a $2 million offer from a distributor for the rights to Four Eyed Monsters, Crumley says, "No." Buice isn't so sure. "Only if we maintain control," Crumley insists. What if that wasn't part of the deal? "No."

Buice bites her tongue. She and Crumley fought almost every day while they were making their picture. She once got so fed up, she told him she was leaving as soon as they finished the damn thing. But their arguments smacked of truth. Authenticity, even. And in the end, they made the couple's story--what's the word?--cinematic.

Adam L. Penenberg is a Fast Company contributing writer.