Today was a major victory for the movie. We have been anxiously - no, all caps - ANXIOUSLY - awaiting word from the US Olympic Committee. The past 48 hours have been a rollercoaster of emotion. After calling to see if it’s ok that an announcer in the movie mentions the “O” word, Ken was told by the USOC that we were in violation of their trademark “Road To Athens” and they wanted some money to let us use the name. Well, we could change the name easy enough but then they watched the trailer and BOOM - things got worse. They said the content of the film was “Olympic-themed” and that also violated their trademark - not good. SO - that seemed to the USOC to indicate that we should pay them royalties. And at first it looked like we might have to pay in the neighborhood of $150,000 - uh, yea. Riiiiight. I don’t live in that neighborhood and neither does Ken. Since I sold my bike in Austria to pay the rent I have not won the lottery. Nor has Ken taken a second morgage on his house or sold his kids into slavery - so that kind of money was NOT in our budget. After some fearful nights and ideas of changing the name (Off Road To Debt was my new favorite), we did some back and forth with the USOC and I’m STOKED to announce we struck a deal!!!! We don’t even have to open a new credit card for it! WHEW.

It might not sound like a big deal but as of this morning, the film was in serious jeapordy of coming to a quick end. VERY BIG THANKS to the USOC for being reasonable and working with us. Feels good to be legit!

So it’s full-speed-ahead and I’d once again like to thank anyone who is still reading this. Sorry it’s so long in between updates.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 7th, 2005 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.