Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Give and you shall Receive

I met up with Bruce Garrett this week in Baltimore. He and I are both executive producers of the film, This is What Love in Action Looks Like. (link to trailer below). The film follows the story of the 2005 protests in front of the ex-gay program Love in Action, protests sparked by the blog entries of a young 16 year-old whose parents forced him to attend the program for eight weeks.

Morgan Jon Fox directs and edits the film and has been making good progress on it. He should have a version of it ready for preview by February and then it will have an official premiere at a film festival later in the years.

As producers, Bruce and I have to produce money! Morgan works through the non-profit organization, the Memphis Digital Arts Co-op (MeDiA Co-op) and is housed in First Congregational Church in Memphis. Although the film operates on a very low budget, we still need to raise funds to cover licensing for music and TV footage, fees for entry into film festivals and money to cover some of the editing costs.

Bruce and I collaborated about creative ways we could raise money (other than just asking for it!) and he agreed to auction off a political cartoon on whatever topic the receiver desires. Bruce does amazing cartoons including his Coming Out series. He is also considering selling a panel from that series and give the proceeds to MeDiA Co-op for the film.

For my part, tonight I present the Ho Ho Homo No Mo Holiday Special (see crazy poster here) and will show the extended trailer to the audience then give a portion of the proceeds of the offering to the film. But then I started thinking of other things I could auction off and have a few ideas.

1. A DVD of Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House. Earlier this year I made up 100 copies of a DVD mostly to send out to perspective venues so they can preview it, but I also sold a bunch in the UK. Almost no one in the States has this and I will not sell it anymore until I have a new version out. So I thought I could auction off this limited edition DVD.
2. A personalized voice-mail message done by the character of your choice. I can send you the file in mpg format and you can use it on your phone for your voice mail. Come on can't you just see Marvin or Chad taking calls for your. Priceless.
3. A CD of the BEST of Marvin. These Marvin files are no longer available on the web (because blogger sucks--don't get me started about bloggers lost audio function) but I have the files of each of Marvin's many audio posts. Wouldn't you like to have that in your hot little hand?

Now I don't know the first thing about Ebay, except that it can be insanely addictive, but if someone out there knows how we can setup these three items on Ebay, I say, let the bidding begin!

If you want to make a donation directly to the MeDiA Co-op, checks should be made out to First Congregational Church, with "Media Co-op" listed in the "for" line. Mail to:

MeDiA Co-op
1000 S. Cooper St.
Memphis, TN 38104

You can also join the Facebook Cause for This is What Love in Action Looks Like

And here is where your money will go:

Labels: ex-gay, Love in Action, media

posted by Peterson Toscano @ 3:06 PM