Film Is Hell: How I Sold My Soul to Make the Crappiest Movies in History

Welcome to hell. A hell of mud, of rain, of exhaustion so deep it turns your blood to clay. A hell of automatic gunfire gone wrong, crappy food, filthy porta-potties, crazed actors speaking to God through tubes in their heads, pissed off sheep, and psychotic mailmen.

Welcome to hell. Film is Hell.

Film is Hell tells the hilarious and horrific tale of Sultan Film Productions, a band of cinematic desperadoes who risk death and arrest to make movies so awful they literally set the international standard for bad. It's a rip-roaring, comedic tour of no-budget, independent, action film-making where non-existent production dollars are replaced by guts, stamina, ingenuity, and outright criminality

Scamming their way on board working nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, hanging out of bi-planes, getting run over by tanks, braving cattle stampedes, donning military wardrobe to infiltrate Marine Corps and Navy SEAL demonstrations, covertly filming explosions being staged for a major Hollywood feature, no risk is too great if the result is great footage that will help them compete in an increasingly brutal market.
It's a world of chaos and insanity, and for young, genre-addicted outlaw filmmaker Matthew Howe, becoming part of this insanity is the dream of a lifetime.
But the dream has a dark side—bastardized scripts, bad acting, cheap sets, rain, mud, cold, cow dung, and spirit-crushing 20-hour work days. Again and again, Howe is forced to sacrifice at the altar of the budget, each compromise tearing away another chunk of his soul. Before long, he finds himself sucked into a cinematic quagmire, desperate to escape, but also harboring a dark secret—a horrific truth he refuses to admit, even to himself. Despite the pain and suffering, the endless waits for his hard work to pay off, his mounting depression and desperation, part of him loves it and hungers for more.

Hilarious, horrific, heartfelt, and all true, Film is Hell pitches the reader head first into the crazy world of the struggling low-budget action movie desperado, a world no book has yet dared to document in such loving and gruesome detail.