He didn't spend years working for free at TV stations and movie studios, living in his car, sneaking onto the Sony lot to make a short film, just so he could go back to his crappy hotel in Sofia and nurse a flu. This was it. His dream was coming true. And if it happened to be taking place in the middle of an icy windstorm, so be it. Lots of American movies are shot in Bulgaria - not because location scouts have singled it out as God's little acre of cinematographic splendor, but because the economy is rotten, making it a cheap place to produce a picture.
Most directors work here only reluctantly, dreaming of big budgets and more enviable locales.
David used tools like Photoshop to jump-start a career that seemed to have started and ended all at once a few years ago, when his idea of a reward was considerably glitzier. His roundabout trip to the director's chair vividly illustrates how the plummeting price of digital filmmaking is giving talented misfits a chance to short-circuit the existing power structure and capture the attention of a global audience. In fact, you might think of him as Hollywood's first breakout geek, a director who owes his debut to Moore's Law. Not long ago, Douglas didn't need to scratch around and make do. But he failed to make a movie.