Get Nick: Can 'Hot Air' filmmakers raise $65K?

Derek Sieg and Jeremy Goldstein want Nick Nolte bad. So badly that they've launched a "Let's get Nick" campaign, with website and videos. They've taken to the streets– and the Downtown Mall– selling raffle tickets and t-shirts to raise money to get Nick. And to get Nick, they need $65,000.

The two filmmakers have written a script called Hot Air, and they think the '70s icon from Rich Man Poor Man (and, more recently, 48 Hours, The Prince the Tides, and Tropic Thunder) would be perfect in the lead role of aging lothario/personal injury lawyer/hard-partying restauranteur who's looking at jail time for questionable business practices and decides the only way out is to fake his own death.

"We would love to get him," says Sieg, a native son of Charlottesville who's back in town after living in L.A. and who wrote, directed, and, in 2006, filmed Swedish Auto here with Lukas Haas and January Jones (now of Mad Men fame).

So why must they raise $65,000?

"That's an important number," says Goldstein, who made the documentary Skid Row and has written a half-dozen screenplays with Sieg. The Screen Actors Guild puts $65K as the minimum amount a low-budget film like Hot Air needs to contract a big-name actor like Nolte, explains Goldstein. And they need a high-profile name to get funding for the film.

"No money, no actor– no actor, no money," explains Sieg.

The "Let's get Nick" campaign breaks tradition by using the Kickstarter crowd-funding system to brazenly campaign for an A-list actor.

"We're the first ones to do it this way," says Sieg, who wants to be able to say to Nolte, "All these people have given money to get you here."

So far, the filmmakers have raised over $36,000– and locally raised actress/singer-songwriter/Sissy Spacek-offspring Schuyler Fisk is attached to the project, according to Goldstein. The Hot Air makers need to have the $65,000 in hand by April 22 to begin filming in Austin in October and November.

Will they make it? Stay tuned.