You are a buyer at the AFM

You walk past the flatscreen showing a trailer for Dead Money and decide it may be right for your area of German DVD



After all, your last Lou Diamond Phillips acquisition, Striking Range sold very well.



The Loews Hotel has eight floors and nobody's staying here tonight. There are maybe 160-180 rooms, all of which have had their beds replaced with a desk and chairs for the producers of the product to house their movies for eight days. Dead Money is being sold in suite 608. So you press the up button. Waiting for the elevator, find yourself looking at two women who's faces have been ripped off exposing muscle and bone in an effort to drum up business for Hatchet in suite 443 while overhearing the buyer from Brazil talking with his money men back home about how best to purchase Phenomenon II.



They are discussing paying in thirteen week increments. Sealing the rights with a downpayment of $20,000 here at the AFM.

In the elevator you are close enough to hear the producer of Fun Park tell a buyer from Great Britain how big their last film, Pumpkin Carver was in the UK.



It sounds like Hatchet has sold another territory. On the 6th floor, as on all other floors buyers walk around past 180 rooms, all of which are hocking 4 or 5 movies right now. Outside of each room, propped on easels are thousands of movie posters highlighting thrilling moments that very well may not even happen in the actual movie.



And inside each room, two salesmen and a flatscreen showing highlights of movies that you find it difficult to belive had anylight that could approach "high."



Again with the plane crashes? For a second you think how It's amazing that exploitation filmmakers could make action movie hay out of United 93 and then you pass Snakes on a Train and Killer Bees on a Plane (both were really at the AFM, I'm serious) and realize what the plane hype is really all about. Snakes on a Plane is the movie that should be here at the AFM if it weren't a huge huge box office hit, but there's no difference in that film and these.

You work your way past more posters that drip blood and show off anime buttocks, a ten foot tall Emmanuelle (yes, Emmanuelle) peeks from around the corner from a suite down the hall. You look for anything reminiscent of last years hit.



or anything topical



You round the corner run into H.R. Pufnstuff and have your picture taken with him.



The releasing company who has just bought the rights to the children's show puts the picture in a frame advertising their new product. Sold. And finally you make it to suite 608. After an exchange of cards you are sat down and given the full pitch on what the marketable elements of Lou Diamond Phillips and the current hot topic of Poker can do for your audience. From across the hall someone is being told what the marketable elements of Armand Assante and the hot topic of date rape can do for them...