In a surprise move, Miramax Films has announced a big-budget remake of Sweet Bread Productions' groundbreaking, genre-defying 2005 film "The Movie: A brainchild of two borderline schizophrenic college students compiling their mental bowel movements into one semi-cohesive collage of scenes about nothing (or So It Would Seem)".

Set to be released in time for the 10-year anniversary of the original, the film stars Hollywood power-duo Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as the troubled friends Vini and Ed, tormented by a dark secret and slowly losing their minds as they try desperately to find an open restaurant. Funding for the project was provided by Rupert Murdoch, who is in talks to acquire SBP entirely.


Full Cast
Vini: Ben Affleck
ED: Matt Damon
Chris: Jonah Hill
Brian: Adam Sandler
Duke: Jet Li
Chris' Buddy: Benicio del Toro
Chris' mom: Kathy Bates
Tony: Ryan Gosling
Kayne: Andy Serkis
Man Bitch: Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson.
Girl at Club: Mila Kunis
Maylin: Lucy Liu
Waiter: Paul Giamatti
Arnie: Edward Norton
Cop: John Cho

Welcome to our new website! After retooling a few things and redesigning the look and interface, we're proud to debut our new home on the web, featuring the brilliant illustration of longtime collaborator Brittney Zablackis, who drew the donut in our logo almost a decade ago. We're still working out a few bugs, so bear with us as we continue to polish everything.

We recently celebrated our tenth anniversary and 2015 is shaping up to be the most active and exciting year in our organization's history. Here are some recent and upcoming happenings:

• We recently completed our first full-show video, of The Great Wall's recent concert in Los Angles. You can stream the whole thing and download a copy of the HD video here. We're also planning to release a DVD version, which you can purchase from the band.
• We filmed Domeshots' first show in four years last month in Eugene, Oregon. Hope to have the full show edited down in the next few weeks. Until then, here's a taste. Also working on videos of Septacy, Horders (one song from their recent show is already available), and a few others. We're still chipping away at the Circle Takes the Square video we shot last April. We promise to have that done before it's a year old.
• We're designing new merch over at Zazzle, proceeds will directly support our work. You can also make a direct donation through our new Paypal page.
• As you can see, we're listing upcoming shoots on the sidebar. If you'd like to support one of them, please consider making a contribution. HDV tapes aren't expensive, but they aren't free either.
• We're working on some new shorts. And some old ones that were shelved long ago.
• There's a SBP Twitter feed now.

As a volunteer operation with very modest expenses, we've never done the crowdfunding thing, or asked for money in general, but this time it's a little different.

Earlier this year, we discovered The Great Wall. They're an awesome, technically mindblowing, difficult-to-categorize band from LA led by guitarist/vocalist/principal songwriter Chris Waldrep. A few months ago, they announced that they would be playing perhaps their biggest show to date, opening for Intronaut at LA's Roxy Theatre. We were already considering traveling to SoCal to film their set, but then Waldrep posted this revealing update on the band's Facebook.

Hey everybody, CW here... I wanted to share a few updates with those of you who are brave/masochistic enough to have invested your time, attention, and, in some cases, actual currency in this strange little project of ours, since it may be a while until you hear from us again. This band has survived several crippling blows over the years, since long before it was ever known as The Great Wall, but we've always managed to find a way to bounce back. This time is a bit different, though, for one reason in particular that I'll explain after I preface this a bit...

Whenever we seem to build up even the tiniest bit of momentum, we lose a limb (usually in the form of our drummer, since playing drums in this band is, quite frankly, a thankless and exhausting task, and I respect and admire anyone who's ever attempted it). Then we start from scratch. After we somehow manage to replace them (a search I could spend an entire hour alone being dejected about here), we'll set about re-learning everything together, writing a bunch of new material, and getting ready to either start recording or playing as many shows as we can afford (and I mean that quite literally). By now, on average, an entire year will have gone by, and then right as we're about to pull the trigger, somebody inevitably quits, or goes to jail, or disappears off the face of the earth entirely, and the process begins all over again like clockwork. This just about sums up the last ten years of my life.

When I learned that we were going to be opening for our good friends Intronaut at their hometown ten-year anniversary show in LA later this year, I was thrilled and terrified all at once, because it meant that, A) we were finally going to play a show with some relatively established bands that exist somewhere within the same genre as us (a first), all without having to sell (aka buy) hundreds of dollars worth of pre-sale tickets at the behest of the venue (i.e. a miracle), and B) we have a momentous opportunity to take advantage of, which, when translated, means that somebody (probably our drummer) is about to quit. And that's exactly what happened. Again, being the drummer in this band is like dropping a box of power tools down a flight of stairs and being asked to transcribe in detail the sound every piece makes, so when a better opportunity comes along (and they always do), I'm not at all surprised when they take it. Playing parts that don't make you want to kill yourself for taking the instrument up in the first place in a band that has a full support system and tours lined up for months to come and getting paid to do it is obviously a lot more rewarding than doing literally none of those things, and having no real reason to expect that you will ever be doing them in the future.

Anyway...

So, right as it seemed like we would have to back out on the best gig we've ever been offered and put the band in limbo again, we managed to convince what has got to be the last truly competent drummer I know within a fifty-mile radius to save our asses and sub for the night. Crisis averted. Right?

A couple months ago (probably over a year now), I noticed a small, strange bump at the base of my throat. I immediately assumed it was a tumor, because it would totally fuck up any plans I had as a singer in a band, and that's just the kind of shit I expect to happen to me at this point. I brought it to the attention of my friends and relatives, and determined that it was probably nothing to worry about. If it was a growth of some kind, it was probably benign, and I probably wouldn't need to do anything about it. I made repeated attempts to book an appointment with an ENT, but because not a single person at Anthem Blue Cross could tell me what kind of coverage I have, much less who would accept it, I spent the better part of the year being bounced around between my insurance (being told everything was fine) and every doctor's office I contacted (being told that I either have no insurance at all, or that, if I do have insurance, it's not valid). Since everybody I had already talked to about it assured me it was likely no big deal, and I had no way of actually finding out for myself, I decided to defer to the positive mental attitudes of those around me and basically just forgot about it.

Fast forward another six or seven months. I started hearing that a friend of mine who had finally gotten around to seeing an ENT about some difficulty he was experiencing with his singing voice had discovered a golf-ball sized nodule inside his throat that would need to be lasered out (a procedure that would cost him upwards of $10,000+, due to the severity and size of the growth, and the amount of time that he waited before getting it looked at). I asked to be referred to the same ENT, and after another month of putting my insurance provider through the ringer, I managed to schedule an appointment to get my shit checked out.

The first appointment went well enough. The doctor did a physical exam, put a fiber-optic camera down my throat, and determined that because whatever it was didn't seem to be growing on my thyroid gland, it was probably nothing and didn't deserve surgery. Just to be sure, though, I should come back for an MRI. I did. Following that, they determined that the growth WAS in fact on my thyroid, which was more troubling than it not being on my thyroid, and so they stuck a needle into it and extracted some cells for examination under a microscope. After the biopsy, I was out of town with almost no reception for a week, but I did manage to make out a portion of a voicemail in which my doctor called to inform me that, while the growth wasn't anything for me to be worried about, it would need to be removed entirely. Obviously those two sentences don't really make sense together, but I couldn't hear the whole message anyway, so I assumed maybe I wasn't hearing him correctly. When I returned from my trip, I called him back.

My doctor, who now referred to the growth as a 'tumor' (not a very reassuring change of pace), told me that my whole thyroid would need to be removed, and that I should schedule another appointment with the other lead specialist to determine exactly what should be done, and when. It was there that I discovered, ultimately, that I have cancer.

[A quick word about thyroid cancer: according to the second specialist, if you're going to get any kind of cancer (and I'm not suggesting you should, or will), thyroid cancer is essentially the most manageable and treatable form of it. Once they remove the gland, I'll need to take pills for the rest of my life to replace the regulatory hormones that will be gone with it, but all in all, I should live out a full and healthy life. Whether or not I will ever be able to sing again, or with the same power, range, and texture I am accustomed to needing, no one can really say.]

In any case, I asked whether or not it would be prudent to do the operation right away, or if I might be able to wait until after our show to take care of it, since the likelihood of us ever getting an offer like it again in the near future is evidently less than the chance that I would personally encounter a potentially life-threatening disease before my thirtieth birthday.

Because the tumor itself isn't very aggressive (especially after more than a year without any noticeable change in size or shape), they said it should be fine if I wait to take it out, which means we will be able to play this show, but that it may very well be the last one I ever do, at least as a vocalist. The total loss of my ability to so much as speak properly, let alone sing, is a realistic outcome. Any plans for other shows are obviously on hold at this point, as are plans to continue recording. Once I have my surgery, it will be a month or two before I can begin vocal therapy (a long and difficult process), and only then will I really be able to assess the damage that will have been done by all of this. If my experience has taught me anything, it's to expect the worst and build from there, should circumstances improve enough to give me reason for it. Granted, it's not a very uplifting point of view, but in this particular case, expecting the worst literally saved my life.

So, yeah. That's where things are at right now. If you've made it this far, I want to thank you, along with anybody and everybody who's ever taken the time to come to a show, listened to our records, shared them with others, or offered their assistance in helping us bring our sound to people that might find something real in it. I've given just about everything I have to accomplish whatever it is we may have accomplished, as little as that may be. It'll be that way until I have literally nothing left to give. I hope this comes across in the music, because I live every day of my life by it. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for allowing me the privilege of exploring the only truly meaningful outlet I've ever had within my grasp. It's as much yours as it is mine. That's why it's free. Hopefully I'll get to see you at the Roxy in December! Definitely gonna make this one count...

Well that sealed the deal for us, we had to document this show—we might not get another chance. Unfortunately, upon contacting the venue, we learned that they have a strict policy for recording and filming there, with a steep fee of $500 per camera. It's understandable since the Roxy is a quite famous venue and mostly draws larger acts with larger budgets for such projects. However, we were able to convince them to drop the fee for one camera and offer us a discount on the audio recording (which the band generously offered to cover at their own expense). However, that still leaves us with a sizeable $1000 bill to do a proper three-camera video of The Great Wall's set. With litte cash on hand for this purpose, we're asking you, the music-loving masses to consider making a contribution to our IndieGogo campaign to cover these fees and help us make this happen. Since we launched the campaign a couple of weeks ago, we've raised about a third of our goal, and more than half of what we need to do this at all ($500 will allow us to do a single-camera video). If you're feeling generous, please kick in a few bucks. If you're not interested in making a financial contribution, we encourage you to at least help us get the word out about the campaign by sharing it on social media or emailing it to your friends or other relevant contacts.

We're offering a few perks in the campaign: $40 will get you a DVD copy of the show, $50 will get you a shout-out in said DVD's credits, $25 will let you see some early sneak peeks as we edit the footage.

Check out our fundraising campaign here. Thanks so much in advance.

Joseph Clerici

Sweet Bread Productions