First, I wanted to say to all of you who are following our blog that we’re back!

Second, I’m not Steve!  My name is Erick Goss and I’m an executive producer who works with Steve and was the guy who convinced him to blog in the first place.  I’m the equivalent of a “suit” but wear jeans or khakis most days.  When Steve talks about the guys forcing him into social media, the target of his angst is me.

Third, little did I know that in the process of launching a blog (Steve was not excited about the idea) that we would be victims of “spamdexing”.  This wasn’t immediately apparent to us as I have been busy raising money for the movie and Steve tries to avoid the blog in every way possible (any encouragement is welcome!).

A few weeks ago Steve excitedly told me that we had more than a thousand comments on his last blog post.  He noted that one of the commenters in particular was very complimentary (they left comments like “great site”), had an affinity for referencing verses from the Gospel of John as their name (e.g. John1277, John 316, John 347)  and for some reason had an obsession with erectile dysfunction medication.  I immediately recognized we had been spammed and that our efforts in social media were off to a slow start.  After finally getting a chance to address the problem and marking about 3500 comments as spam, we’re back in action and Steve is ready (and somewhat willing) to begin blogging.

For those of you who have found this blog (and aren’t spambots), thank you for your support and encouragement…especially to those of you who even volunteered to manage our blog and take care of the spam issue!  Please know that Steve is about to blog…consistently….and we are making good progress on the movie.

Our most significant obstacle right now is raising money.  In addition to the challenge of the worst economy in our lifetime, most people who love the book don’t have money and most people who have money don’t know about the book.  This has presented quite a challenge.  That said, we’ve had some major wins over the last 30 days and are developing good momentum.  Our hope is to shoot the movie in the spring or early summer but everything is contingent on money and getting the right cast.  Once those two things come together, Steve will be free to create cinematic greatness.

Many of you have asked how you can help.  I plan to update the blog with ideas over the next few weeks but here are a couple of things that would help in the near term:

1)  Pray.  We really need your prayers.  There are lots of things we need prayer for but I’ll address those more specifically in the future.  Just praying that we’d find funding (“God, please help Steve, Erick and team find the money they need need to shoot Blue Like Jazz!”) and a great cast (“God, help them find great leads who are as excited about Blue Like Jazz as we are!”) would be a huge help.

2)  Spread the word.  The more people know about the movie and what we’re trying to do, the easier it is for us to get funded.  A lot of potential investors don’t know about Blue Like Jazz and the impact it’s had on people’s lives.  They do understand numbers.  The more people blog about the movie, sign up for the newsletter, become Steve’s friend on Facebook, the easier it is for investors to understand the impact of the book and the likelihood the movie will be a success.

3) Share your ideas.  Let us know what you think we should be doing.  Some of you have already shared some great ideas that we’re in the process of working on.  Any advice is welcome (at least for now)

Thanks again for your support of Steve and Blue Like Jazz!