Winning the Contest was the Easy Part

On paper, the backstory on Pete Jones film Stolen Summer has, the perfect arc: Former Chicago insurance salesman wins an aspiring filmmakers' contest organized by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, bagging a million dollar movie budget and theatrical distribution from Miramax On TV it made for electrifying entertainment, as HBO's recently completed Project Greenlight reality series followed the progress of first-timer Jones and his film from script to screen. "It's a far cry from winning a contest to actually directing a movie," he explains. "After I'd won, my first thought was, I'm not quite sure how m going to do what I said I was going to do."

Due to the HBO series the film--a period drama set in 1976 about an Irish Catholic boy who tries to convert a dying rabbi's son to Catholicism--hits theaters this month with a built in audience. And difficult-to-meet expectations: "I think people will like my movie," says Jones, "but it'll be difficult to be as universally appealing as Project Greenilght has been."

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