Stu Pollard will be an exception at next week's MidCoast Film & Arts Festival. While most films at the event are still negotiating the winding road of distribution - trying to be seen by people who don't get to film festivals - Pollard's Nice Guys Sleep Alone has achieved success. The film, finished in 1999, hit DVD in early 2000 and made it to HBO in fall of that year.

Even so, Pollard, who will be attending the inaugural Quad Cities film festival, doesn't believe his job is done. "Just because it's been out there a while and has some distribution, there are a lot of people who haven't seen it," he said. "You have to treat the film like it's your child. ... I'll support the film when it's in mid-life crisis in 20 years. ... I will never turn my back on it."

Pollard has provided well for his first child, having guaranteed that it will be somewhere on your cable system from now until 2016. He estimates that the movie will make back its $800,000 budget in around 2010, although inflation will mean that investors - almost exclusively friends and family - will probably not get back the original value of their money.

The film is a quirky comedy about dating, in which a nice guy whose dates always seem to end in friendship decides that he fails because he's not playing by the dating rules. "If you don't play games, you're not going to get anywhere with the opposite sex," Pollard described.

The writer-director-producer developed the script from the book by Bruce Feirstein, best known for Real Men Don't Eat Quiche. The book doesn't really have a story, so Pollard used it for inspiration, expanded on some of its ideas, and mined his own life. For instance, one chapter in the book deals with a "pre-relationship agreement" that people sign before they begin dating. Pollard decided "to create an attorney who specializes in this," he said.

At USC's film school, Pollard devoted much of his time to producing other students' work. "You help rich kids spend their money," he joked. (Or maybe he wasn't kidding. He said several people he worked with spent multiples of $100,000 on 10-minute films.)

He learned much about filmmaking through that process, but he didn't learn anything about what happens when a film is done. Pollard didn't expect that he'd be spending two and a half years working to get Nice Guys distributed.

He envisioned taking the movie to Sundance and having Miramax give him $5 million to take it off his hands. "If that sounds delusional, that's because it was," he said. "It was a big wake-up call for me. They don't teach you that in film school."

Although he said he wouldn't necessarily turn down a directing job for a major Hollywood player, Pollard is leery of the studio system. And going the independent route has its advantages. "You don't muddle the process with a million different people," he said. "You have total control of the process." There's a downside, too: "You have no guarantee that anybody's going to see the damned thing."

The writer-director has just finished supplementary photography on his next feature, the romantic thriller Keep Your Distance. The movie deals with a long-distance relationship, and how sometimes it's easier to trust a stranger than someone to whom you've been intimately involved, and the cast includes Gil Bellows (Ally McBeal) and Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein). The movie was made for under $5 million, and he expects it to be finished by spring.

Pollard has his eyes on a couple new projects but insists that his primary loyalty lies with his first two offspring. "It's my second child this time around," he said, "but I can't not take care of my child and get caught up with the pretty girl across the street. You have a responsibility to get your work in front of as many people as possible."

In the case of Nice Guys Sleep Alone, that meant cutting a deal with HBO, even if it involved late-night showings when only insomniacs could see his film. "There are worse places to be filler," Pollard said.

Nice Guys Sleep Alone will be screened at 11:30 p.m. Friday and 9:25 p.m. Saturday at Nova 6 cinemas in Moline. Admission is $7 per screening for adults and $5 for students.

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