Movie Mezzanine has been the home of a wide-ranging array of cinematic coverage for nearly 5 years. We remain one of the few independent film websites, enabling our writers from across the globe to cover everything from film festivals to gender disparity throughout Hollywood, and everything in between. In 2016, the Movie Mezzanine editorial staff (Sam Fragoso, Josh Spiegel, Kenji Fujishima, and Tina Hassannia) made the choice to strip down the number of essays and reviews we published on a weekly basis so we could finally begin to pay those people who wrote for the site (as well as the editors themselves).
As we enter 2017, we want to continue to be able to pay our writers and editors, but things have changed: the sponsorship we had at the beginning of 2016, which allowed us to pay writers, has begun to shrink up, as it has with many other film websites that want to keep the lights on. In lieu of hoping for another sponsor to swoop in at the last minute, we’d like to reach out to the same community that’s helped us flourish over the last half-decade. That’s why we’ve created our very own Patreon page, which you can peruse at your convenience.
Our overall Patreon goal is $2,000 per month. This may seem high, but we want to be very clear about something immediately: every cent you choose to send our way will be going to either the people who write for Movie Mezzanine or the editorial staff. We’re lucky enough to have a site design we like already, so we don’t need money to redesign anything. With $2,000 a month, we can fairly pay our writers and editors more than the current rates we offer for their tireless hard work; this goal will let us offer competitive rates with high-caliber film websites.
Most importantly, your contributions to Movie Mezzanine will allow us to provide you with more of the great film coverage the site has featured in the past four years. With this money, we can send more of our writers to South by Southwest, the Cannes Film Festival, TIFF, and beyond.
What’s more, the more money we receive will allow us to have more reported features like Corey Atad’s exploration of the fan-driven effort to de-specialize the original Star Wars, or Tina Hassannia’s investigation into the gender disparity in the films released by boutique labels like the Criterion Collection. We can publish more incisive essays like this one from Angelica Jade Bastién on Wonder Woman’s presence in the DC Cinematic Universe, Adam W. Hofbauer’s piece on the genius of Edgar Wright, or Charles Bramesco’s satirical look at Fifty Shades of Grey.
And if we surpass our monthly goal, we can have more than once-a-weekday content at the site, paying more writers to write more great material.
That’s what we’re hoping for: to continue bringing the best of film writing to readers across the world. With your help, we’ll be able to keep it up!
(Cover artwork by Alex Kittle)
