The GoFundMe Pledge

 I am announcing an important modification to my GoFundMe campaign Michael's GoFundMe…

It has always been difficult for me to ask for help, and especially to ask for help while offering nothing in return. I feel like that scene in the great movie Cinderella Man, where Russell Crowe returns to the club where he had formerly been a member and holds out his hat to collect donations. I remember sitting in the theater watching that and thinking, “There may come a time in life where you have to swallow your pride THAT much.”. And here it is. What do you do when the only thing you have left to sell is yourself? Negotiate a good price.

I have decided to convert my GoFundMe campaign into a sale. What am I selling? A 51% stake in MYSELF...you heard me right. Read on...

There was a time when a person’s word meant something. An honorable man’s word was once something more valuable than printed currency. Today, most people’s word doesn’t mean much. Mine still does. 

I keep hearing all these billionaires pledging to give away half their wealth, but every time I look up, these same guys are still the richest people in the world, so I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’m going to make a similar pledge, but I’m going to do it in a way where it is possible for you to easily keep track of whether I’m keeping my word or not: I’m making the pledge from a place where I have nothing and I am making it to a specific group of people who will be able to hold me LEGALLY accountable for it. 

I am pledging to give away 50% of what I earn, FOREVER (even after I’m dead) from any source, to the donors to my current GoFundMe campaign, under the following conditions:

-This offer is open only to those who make donations by October 31, 2022.  If the $10,000 goal is not reached, I will, at my discretion, either return the donations or keep the pledge to those who have donated.

-The pledge will apply to income above my basic living expenses, which I will place at $50,000 per year (subject to future reasonable increase for inflation). So, the 50% pledge will apply to income in excess of $50,000 per year. 

-Income will not include taxes, management or agent fees, union dues or other things like that I have to pay. It is 50% of my “take-home” pay (including stocks, dividends and other non-cash compensation).

-Investment will be capped at $10,000. The 50% of my earnings will be divided amongst the donors of the first $10,000, in proportion to their donation size. So, for example, if you donate $100, that will entitle you to 1% of the $10,000 investment pool, or 0.5% of my future earnings.  So, if you were to donate $100, if I ever make $1 million in a year, I would owe you $50,000. If I EVER make $100,000 in a year, you'll get your $100 back, plus $25 profit.  But if I ever become a success, you'll be making money hand over fist.  Want the whole 50%? Donate $10,000 (in a minute, I’ll talk about who might have a strong incentive to do that).

-Since I do not have family or children, you investors will inherit 50% of my estate (100% if I never get married or have children). I will write it into my will. Dead writers sell better than living ones, so this could be a real gift to you if I don’t live so long. Copyrights expire seventy years after the death of the author, but stocks and property (if I have any by the time I die) last forever. 

But I said I was going to give away 51% earlier. Where did the other 1% go?  I intend to change the definition of one-percenter. One percent of what I earn will be set aside for the four people who donated already without asking anything in return. This one-percent will not be subject to the $50,000 per year minimum, and it will be PRE-TAX. I want to make these four people rich (if they aren't already).

So why am I an investment that makes sense?  I mentioned the world’s richest billionaires for a reason. I have a lot in common with them. I went to college at Stanford. That’s a pretty exclusive club that includes a bunch of multi-millionaires and billionaires. It would not surprise me if more than half of the students who were there with me in the mid-90s are millionaires today. Many are BILLIONAIRES--Tiger Woods, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, just to name a couple...Marissa Mayer ought to be a billionaire if she's not). The list of Stanford alum billionaires is LONG. The list of Stanford alums who are not billionaires but hold similar levels of power is even longer (e.g. Mitt Romney, Cory Booker). You can go on betting that I'm going to die the poorest, brokest Stanford alum of all time...or you can bet that I'm going to turn it around.

They say the economy is rigged in favor of the rich. Well, let me tell you how you can rig this investment in favor of yourself if you only have the relatively meager sum of $10,000 and the right connections. I mentioned earlier that there were some people who might have an incentive to make this entire $10,000 investment. Who?

Suppose you were, say, Lucy Hale and Peyton List, and you went and you read my script “Manifest Destiny” (right here: Manifest Destiny Complete Screenplay) and you said, “What?!? Scarlett Johansson and Amanda Seyfried don’t want to make this movie?!? We will!”.  

I imagine Lucy and Peyton can come up with $10,000 between the two of them. And then I imagine if they print out Manifest Destiny and walk into a studio and say, “We want to make this movie.”, it’ll get greenlit somewhere. Even if the studio decides to replace Lucy and Peyton with bigger names, they’ll still make about half a million bucks from what I get paid for the script (plus, they’ll KEEP getting paid for everything I write thereafter, including the sequel to Manifest Destiny starring them!).  So if you have $10,000 and connections entertainment industry to get just one of my scripts sold, this is free money!

How could it be even more free money? Let’s say you’re actually an executive at a movie studio with the power to greenlight projects. You’ve certainly got $10,000. Or suppose you were Bruce Kaufman, an agent who read a script of mine and liked it and certainly has the ability to get at least one of my scripts sold. Bruce could donate the $10k, agree to represent me, and every script of mine he sells, he’ll get his agent fee, plus HALF of what I get. Or if you’re an executive at 20th Century Fox, you can donate the $10k, greenlight "Manifest Destiny" and its sequel "Manifest Destiny: Century Twenty-One" (which I can write in two weeks), and make yourself a few million on a $10,000 investment. Is that legal? I dunno, but if we agree to it, who can say otherwise?  I’ve got a whole Marvel Universe of Manifest Destiny stories ready to go (if you read the script, you’ll see how).

Everybody always talks about wishing they’d got in on Apple stock at $1. Well, this is what it looks like. The $1 Apple investment is the one like I am right now: an investment in something that everyone else expects to fail. But you are the smart one that knows better. Maybe I won’t make it. BUT MAYBE I WILL!  And since all the people I called friends and family jumped off the ship when they thought it was sunk, if you join me now, you’ll be my friends and family when I get to the top, and I’ll throw a big party in Vegas for my investors, and we’ll order the EXPENSIVE champagne and laugh at the people who didn’t believe in US!