I liked it before it came out.

I want to say that I liked it after it came out now! Is this like an American comedic Zatoichi? Because that's really all I need to know.

This film also had good use of Sho Kusogi at the end. It's a shame that we don't get these sorts of mid-budget sort of flicks at this quality any more. And yes this is very much an Americanized light hearted Zatoichi and it executes that concept very well.

I hear that betamaxed, back then many small studios were putting out cool actions films for just a couple million dollars, and they could easily make a decent profit.

M-2M. You had to go to the conferences in California.
People would spend that much on stv movies staring a singular Tv star flavor of the week (or Rutger Hauer or some other person) who generally took 25-50% of the entire budget. The profit incentive came in general from a buxom nude California girl that would serve as the push for impulse buys in foreign countries.

I remember reading in Script and Fade Out magazines back in college that that was one of the best places to start as a writer. You could hope to earn 1% of the gross before and after production, which resulted in -20k a script. I was very attracted to this model so I wrote, in 2001, "Bloodbath.com," a screenplay about a haunted porn website.

The idea has since been appropriated. I blame you, America. And God.

anyway, those days are dead.
you have to kickstart your movie and have it all together before telling everyone. The days of spec scripts are mostly gone.
There's no STV market these days.

YouTube has become the new Cannon Group and Golan Globus. Totally was not worth the trade.