Every conceivable solution has been proposed for the current dearth of financing for independent movies. Every major film festival offers a seminar where desperate filmmakers can pay to hear how much money they can make on YouTube and iTunes. The only people usually making money are the event organizers.

What is the solution to a broken system where advertising and promotion costs have jumped out of reach of most filmmakers, and theaters are even reluctant to rent a screen for a week? My solution is Penny Movies. That doesn’t mean making films for a penny. The costs of production have dropped because of ever cheaper digital cameras and computer post-production. But even filmmakers need to eat.

Penny movies are an idea that goes back to penny novels. Penny novels, or dime novels as they became with inflation, were popular from the 1850′s. They were eight page newspaper-like weekly publications featuring romance, adventure, crime, and fantasy. All the genres that are still popular today on TV and in the movies.

The nearest we have to them are probably South American telenovelas on Spanish TV. One of the most popular genres is called “narconovelas:”telenovelas about the romance of the illegal drug trade. A Colombian production that has swept the rating is Sin Senos No Hay Paraiso. Translation: “Without Breasts there is no Paradise.” Don’t tell me that wouldn’t clean up on A&E slotted just after “Breaking Bad.”

How can struggle filmmakers cash in on this? The first step is making films people want to see. Someone in Hollywood once said, “Genuine artistic merit is a great reason to make a movie but let us not forget that simple melodrama, rough action, and sexual desire have been the mainstays of drama for 3000 years.”

Here’s my plan. Filmmakers will post their first installment of three minutes on YouTube with a link to a pay site for further installments. The second installment costs a penny. If you like that, you can see the third for a little more, and if that proves popular, the price of every succeeding installment goes up according to demand. Filmmakers would need to create installments that left you wanting more. Difficult, but isn’t that what we call storytelling?

You say this can’t work? Go to Amiestreet.com. This is a music site where the price of songs is determined by listener demand. The more who like it, the more it costs. Of course, Aime Street’s biggest hit was Ashley Dupre’s What We Want. (She was Eliot Spitzer’s call girl). But they are still in business despite no new scandal singers.

I’ve registered PennyMovies. All filmmakers are welcome to test their first installments on the “Contender” page of MovieWithMe.com. Let’s hope it’s time some hot, original story ideas start appearing-hopefully in English.