Movies You Made: “Eden”

For several months, I’ve been tagging a bunch of emails from filmmakers who have contacted me about their film projects, so I figured we should feature them this May. If you have a movie, either short-form or long, with which you were involved — writer, actor, director — please either email me or post details in comments. Happy to promote them on GITS.

Today we feature the feature length film Eden. Background from co-screenwriter Rick Phillips:

I work at the Korean Cultural Center on Wilshire Blvd — one part of my job as a PR manager here is to collect Korean news in English. I get a lot of mail – — newsletters etc. about Korea and I usually toss everything in the bin because there is too much.

One day a newsletter from the Midwest caught my attention. There was a small article (100 words or so) about a Korean American woman who was swindled and eventually abducted and forced into human trafficking in Las Vegas. Her name is Chong Kim. What blew my mind is that this horrible incident didn’t happen in a third world country — it happened here in the America. I knew nothing about human trafficking and the odd thing is that I came out to LA to write comedy (EDEN is far from comedy. It is very grim, yet buoyant and hopeful at the end — sorry for spoilers).

I knew that there was a compelling story that needed to be told about survival and evil in this world, so I contacted Chong through her website – — at the time she had a non-profit to help woman find shelter after they were rescued from sex slavery. I didn’t hear back for weeks, but then she called me one day out of the blue and we spoke for 2 hours. I basically heard the most disturbing and harrowing story I had ever heard in my life.

From then on, I worked on the script for 2 1/12 years — a lot is fiction though. The real story is much worse, longer, and Chong wanted names changed etc.

When I finished the script, I pitched it around town for while, but nobody was interested. One of the main reasons was because the lead character was Asian. Actually, a woman from a major agency told me that I would never find an investor for a film that featured an Asian lead. I eventually contacted Colin Plank n 2010. He’s the producer of the film, and happened to be a good friend of mine. We grew up in the same town in Maryland. He lives in Seattle (he used to live in LA and worked at Disney for years. You can probably guess why he wanted to move away — haha). The director Megan Griffiths is from Seattle. He was like a one-man studio. He did an amazing job finding the right people. Colin had worked with Megan before on a film called “The Off Hours” , which was shot up in Seattle. Colin asked Megan if she wanted to direct the film. She agreed and did a revision of the script. Colin raised money and EDEN was filmed on location in Seattle and eastern Washington from August 10th — September 11th 2011. Exterior shots in Vegas were shot in October 2011. And the rest is history. It was a big thrill to win the “Audience Award” at SXSW, which is such a wonderful film festival. I really cherished that experience most of all. Cinetic Media (John Sloss) was our sales rep for North America and sold to Phase 4. EDEN sold to 12 countries as well and is now playing in 30 theaters in Korea. Jamie Chung, the lead, is Korean American.

Here is the movie’s trailer:

Other side notes: Eve Ensler (Vagina monologues) endorses the film through her V Day initiative.

It was News and News worthy on iTunes at one point it was ranked #22 in movie downloads.

Eva Longoria and Tommy Chong tweeted about it — which was nice and unexpected. Cheech and Chong were my idols growing up —

I was also nominated with Megan for “Best Screenplay” at the Milan International Film Festival. I have no clue if that means anything.

Thanks for reading about this and getting back to me. I am still trying to get my name out there, which is hard, hard, hard, hard, hard…

By the way, I love your blog. Before your blog; one had to SCOUR the internet for info about screenwriting and industry news. Much simpler now.

Thanks again Scott!

Movie site

Review: Village Voice

Review: Film Threat

Review: Variety

Review: New York Times

Review: IndieWire

Rotten Tomatoes

Thanks, Rick, and good luck with Eden.

Again if you have a film [or web] project you have been involved with and would like me to promote it on GITS, and I can embed it, email me or post details in comments.

May is Movies You Made month. Let’s celebrate your cinematic creativity!

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