This is particularly important on pictures not funded by a major studio. Some of the pictures I’ve done have been combinations of private financing and the selling off of “territories.” It works as follows: Let’s say the picture is budgeted at $10 million. Of this, $3 million is in what we call “above-the-line” costs: property, director, producer, writer, actors. The other $7 million is for “below-the-line” costs—that is, everything else: sets, locations, trucks, studio rental, location and studio crews, catering, legal fees (which are enormous), music, editing, mixing, equipment rental, living expenses, set dressing (furniture, curtains, plants, etc.). “Below-the-line,” in other words, is the cost of the physical production of the movie. You don’t have major studio backing, so the producer goes to any or all of the yearly meetings in Milan, Cannes, or Los Angeles and tries to sell the distribution rights for the movie to individual distributors in France, Italy, Brazil, Japan—every country in the world. If he can hold on to the television rights, he can then sell those off country by country. Videocassette rights. Cable television rights. In this way, he slowly accumulates the $10 million needed to make the movie: $2 million from Japan, $1 million from France, $75,000 from Brazil, $15,000 from Israel. No offer is too small.