Paper Chasers is a feature length documentary about the impact of hip hop entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses in music, film, fashion, TV, print media, and now the Internet. Filmmaker/entrepreneur Maxie Collier and his production team travel the country in an RV, documenting the ambitions, successes, and failures of paper chasers at all levels of the game everyone from hungry upstarts to successful old school veterans.
One of the most exciting aspects of this documentary is that fact that Collier managed to documents many artists rise from the traveling circuit to when they broke out, including Ludacris.
Buy Paper Chasers
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to?
Maxie Collier: This is a thrilling time for me because its been five years of work on this Paper Chasers project from the time of the first idea to the DVD being released. Also everyone around me is so sick of hearing me talk about the project.
DRE: Howd you first get this idea?
MC: I come from a family of writers and educators so it was always my natural inclination. I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, which is close to Baltimore so there were always those Edgar Allen Poe stories influencing me as a kid. I got an interest in film and communication in general. By 19 I was self-publishing a little regional African-American publication and one of my subscribers ended up being the chief engineer on a Black Entertainment Television show. I stumbled into a career in television and during the next ten years after that I started working on films and with BET. I had learned a lot about the techniques of film production and TV production and low-budget film but I was still really struggling. Then I wrote a book on digital filmmaking called The Digital Video Filmmaking Handbook that I self-published in 1998. Then in 1999, I licensed it to a dotcom called ifilm. That was right when the company was starting and there were literally four people in the organization.
So I had an opportunity to work closely with the founder Rodger Raderman over the next few months and got to watch them blow up and go from an organization of four to 100 people and be worth 35 million dollars. Meanwhile my brother was starting a dotcom with some of his friends so between watching these two entrepreneurial ventures very closely and looking at myself as an artist and all the artists Ive seen over the years at BET, I said, Damn, I really need to learn more about business. I wanted to go around and meet more people who might be blowing up. But I wanted to do it in a hip-hop context because I knew folks in the hip-hop community were creating products that were born of their own community experience. Also I was the stage manager at BET when Master P came in there to do his first interview and I heard everybody in the control room laughing at him. But coming from having Southern influence in my family, I didnt laugh and a few years later when I saw him blow up, I wanted to understand how he did it.
DRE: You really captured Ludacris story, how did you hook up with him?
MC: To find someone up and coming I knew we had to go to all the grimy underground spots, talk to every independent DJ and all the hood spots where you hear about the hot stuff on the street, including the hairdressers. We were interviewing a hairdresser named Princess, whose business was primarily profiting off of rappers who had to get their hair braided and things like that. Princess told me I have a client named Chris that I think you guys should talk to. It was right there that we talked to Ludacris three months before he dropped his album.
DRE: Do you still keep in contact with him?
MC: The past couple of years its been harder to talk with him directly. Ive been communicating with his manager more, but during those three years that we followed him, it opened doors in ways that I cant even begin to imagine. They took the time to explain things like contracts and promotion and Im very grateful for that.
DRE: What did you learn that you didnt know?
MC: These guys behind the scenes increased their understanding of business enough to support themselves by having extraordinary businessmen around them. Now looking back I see that model. I thought that Master P had done it by himself. I thought that Russell Simmons had done it by himself. But we dont have to master every aspect if one can find good reliable people.
DRE: Was it very difficult to get certain people?
MC: I chased down Russell Simmons for nearly three years. I chased down Damon Dash for two years before we finally got him. But as word began to build on the underground about our focus many more doors opened up. In fact, now a whole bunch of people have been trying to get us to do interviews so hopefully we can manifest that in another version of the documentary.
DRE: Why was it so tough to get this thing finished?
MC: By year two, I had asked myself that question because we had started off with the financing in place but there were so many interviews that occurred on our initial 38 day run on the road, so many of those folks stories started breaking out in different ways. Six months later were interviewing Ludacris on his first tour with Outkast. Then six months after that he got his first Grammy nomination. A little bit after that, its his first major movie role. But it wasnt just Ludacris, Hump from Sucker Free Records produced an artist named Lil Flip who got pretty big over the past few years. That summer when we first did our interviews, Hump gave us the CD he was preparing to release for Lil Flip and Lil Flip was dressed up like a leprechaun on the cover. I just laughed and threw it in our box of CDs. Then five months later Im reading Vibe magazine and theyre saying Hump sold 150,000 copies of that very same CD.
DRE: I read that you were happier to have the film at Tribeca Film Festival than at Sundance.
MC: Absolutely, our Tribeca screening was a tremendous success. It was sold out so that was a tremendous experience for me. We thought we had finished our documentary but after the Tribeca screening it took us another ten and a half months of negotiation to get the best contract that we could. That was very important because there were so many things that Id learned about how the cash flow works in this distribution game. I wanted to have a chance to generate what I call short money for myself and the company until we could generate the longer money after we recoup.
DRE: How come you put your girlfriends surprise pregnancy into the film?
MC: I come from a very large family and I was raised by my father. I had intentionally not had children for a very long time and I knew that it was time for me to have a child but Id always expected that Id have more money and more ideal circumstances. The fact that we worked together and were in the production made it dually challenging. Its enough to have a child and go through pregnancy when youre not trying to get clearance for 100 interviews and things like that. The whole aspect of my son has been one of the most challenging parts of the past three years because Ive been away from him so much by doing this.
I didnt have to put the pregnancy in the documentary but I wanted to visually and contextually go from the grimiest shit we came across, including my personal experience, to the most dynamic thing we could come up with.
DRE: I read about your next movie, Exit Strategy, whats that about?
MC: Exit Strategy is financed by an organization called Black Hollywood Educational Resource Center and its about gang intervention programs. We interviewed a bunch of former gangbangers who have successfully exited gangs using self-education, entrepreneurship, activism and other means. For example, we interviewed a guy named Tommy the Clown, who is in the documentary Rize, he is a former drug dealer and has spent time in juvenile system for dealing drugs. When he got out he was determined not to go back so he invented the Tommy the Clown persona which he uses in dance battles. Now he has been doing it for 13 years. We had him tell some of his stories and the things he had to do to turn his life around.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
One of the most exciting aspects of this documentary is that fact that Collier managed to documents many artists rise from the traveling circuit to when they broke out, including Ludacris.
Buy Paper Chasers
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to?
Maxie Collier: This is a thrilling time for me because its been five years of work on this Paper Chasers project from the time of the first idea to the DVD being released. Also everyone around me is so sick of hearing me talk about the project.
DRE: Howd you first get this idea?
MC: I come from a family of writers and educators so it was always my natural inclination. I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, which is close to Baltimore so there were always those Edgar Allen Poe stories influencing me as a kid. I got an interest in film and communication in general. By 19 I was self-publishing a little regional African-American publication and one of my subscribers ended up being the chief engineer on a Black Entertainment Television show. I stumbled into a career in television and during the next ten years after that I started working on films and with BET. I had learned a lot about the techniques of film production and TV production and low-budget film but I was still really struggling. Then I wrote a book on digital filmmaking called The Digital Video Filmmaking Handbook that I self-published in 1998. Then in 1999, I licensed it to a dotcom called ifilm. That was right when the company was starting and there were literally four people in the organization.
So I had an opportunity to work closely with the founder Rodger Raderman over the next few months and got to watch them blow up and go from an organization of four to 100 people and be worth 35 million dollars. Meanwhile my brother was starting a dotcom with some of his friends so between watching these two entrepreneurial ventures very closely and looking at myself as an artist and all the artists Ive seen over the years at BET, I said, Damn, I really need to learn more about business. I wanted to go around and meet more people who might be blowing up. But I wanted to do it in a hip-hop context because I knew folks in the hip-hop community were creating products that were born of their own community experience. Also I was the stage manager at BET when Master P came in there to do his first interview and I heard everybody in the control room laughing at him. But coming from having Southern influence in my family, I didnt laugh and a few years later when I saw him blow up, I wanted to understand how he did it.
DRE: You really captured Ludacris story, how did you hook up with him?
MC: To find someone up and coming I knew we had to go to all the grimy underground spots, talk to every independent DJ and all the hood spots where you hear about the hot stuff on the street, including the hairdressers. We were interviewing a hairdresser named Princess, whose business was primarily profiting off of rappers who had to get their hair braided and things like that. Princess told me I have a client named Chris that I think you guys should talk to. It was right there that we talked to Ludacris three months before he dropped his album.
DRE: Do you still keep in contact with him?
MC: The past couple of years its been harder to talk with him directly. Ive been communicating with his manager more, but during those three years that we followed him, it opened doors in ways that I cant even begin to imagine. They took the time to explain things like contracts and promotion and Im very grateful for that.
DRE: What did you learn that you didnt know?
MC: These guys behind the scenes increased their understanding of business enough to support themselves by having extraordinary businessmen around them. Now looking back I see that model. I thought that Master P had done it by himself. I thought that Russell Simmons had done it by himself. But we dont have to master every aspect if one can find good reliable people.
DRE: Was it very difficult to get certain people?
MC: I chased down Russell Simmons for nearly three years. I chased down Damon Dash for two years before we finally got him. But as word began to build on the underground about our focus many more doors opened up. In fact, now a whole bunch of people have been trying to get us to do interviews so hopefully we can manifest that in another version of the documentary.
DRE: Why was it so tough to get this thing finished?
MC: By year two, I had asked myself that question because we had started off with the financing in place but there were so many interviews that occurred on our initial 38 day run on the road, so many of those folks stories started breaking out in different ways. Six months later were interviewing Ludacris on his first tour with Outkast. Then six months after that he got his first Grammy nomination. A little bit after that, its his first major movie role. But it wasnt just Ludacris, Hump from Sucker Free Records produced an artist named Lil Flip who got pretty big over the past few years. That summer when we first did our interviews, Hump gave us the CD he was preparing to release for Lil Flip and Lil Flip was dressed up like a leprechaun on the cover. I just laughed and threw it in our box of CDs. Then five months later Im reading Vibe magazine and theyre saying Hump sold 150,000 copies of that very same CD.
DRE: I read that you were happier to have the film at Tribeca Film Festival than at Sundance.
MC: Absolutely, our Tribeca screening was a tremendous success. It was sold out so that was a tremendous experience for me. We thought we had finished our documentary but after the Tribeca screening it took us another ten and a half months of negotiation to get the best contract that we could. That was very important because there were so many things that Id learned about how the cash flow works in this distribution game. I wanted to have a chance to generate what I call short money for myself and the company until we could generate the longer money after we recoup.
DRE: How come you put your girlfriends surprise pregnancy into the film?
MC: I come from a very large family and I was raised by my father. I had intentionally not had children for a very long time and I knew that it was time for me to have a child but Id always expected that Id have more money and more ideal circumstances. The fact that we worked together and were in the production made it dually challenging. Its enough to have a child and go through pregnancy when youre not trying to get clearance for 100 interviews and things like that. The whole aspect of my son has been one of the most challenging parts of the past three years because Ive been away from him so much by doing this.
I didnt have to put the pregnancy in the documentary but I wanted to visually and contextually go from the grimiest shit we came across, including my personal experience, to the most dynamic thing we could come up with.
DRE: I read about your next movie, Exit Strategy, whats that about?
MC: Exit Strategy is financed by an organization called Black Hollywood Educational Resource Center and its about gang intervention programs. We interviewed a bunch of former gangbangers who have successfully exited gangs using self-education, entrepreneurship, activism and other means. For example, we interviewed a guy named Tommy the Clown, who is in the documentary Rize, he is a former drug dealer and has spent time in juvenile system for dealing drugs. When he got out he was determined not to go back so he invented the Tommy the Clown persona which he uses in dance battles. Now he has been doing it for 13 years. We had him tell some of his stories and the things he had to do to turn his life around.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
courtneyriot:
Paper Chasers is a feature length documentary about the impact of hip hop entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses in music, film, fashion, TV, print media, and now the Internet. Filmmaker/entrepreneur Maxie Collier and his production team travel the country in an RV, documenting the ambitions,...
alisa:
oooh i'm really interested in seeing the next movie project.